Darkness for the Bastards of Pizzofalcone (14 page)

As usual, Lojacono was concentrating in his own way, projecting to the outside world the image of a sleeping Tibetan. Not that it mattered: Martone's eyes never left Alex's face.

“So no valuables were taken. That's the impression we got during our preliminary examination.”

“That's right. And according to what I've been told by my colleagues who examined the scene, and as can also be seen from the photographic report, the funny thing is that the armoires and other pieces of furniture were emptied but not ransacked. It makes you think that they weren't looking for something, but that they clumsily tried to make it seem as though they had been. You must have noticed, for example, the wallet lying open on the nightstand: It looked as if it had been laid out just to display its contents. These days, what with online fraud, credit cards like those are worth many times their weight in gold.”

Lojacono nodded. “And what do we know about the safe?”

“A Mottura 50cm x 50cm, with a double key-and-mechanical-combination locking system. A good safe, not the very latest model, but solid and well built. The anchoring system was robust, with cemented brackets: difficult to extract and carry away—and in fact, they opened it using oxy-fuel cutting.”

“Oxy-fuel cutting?” asked Alex.

“An oxyacetylene torch,” Lojacono explained. “That takes time, to open a safe with an oxyacetylene torch.”

Martone nodded in confirmation. “That's right. The thief or thieves knew that they could count on no one bothering them.”

“Fingerprints, organic residue?”

“Nothing whatsoever. We found only the fingerprints of the husband and wife, and the housekeeper. What's more, the housekeeper's fingerprints all date back to before the burglary. The most recent ones belong to the wife.”

The chief fell silent, and for a while there was a thoughtful lull. Nothing about this burglary added up.

Rosaria went on: “If I were you, I'd try to learn more about the couple. It strikes me as a show staged in order to defraud an insurance company.”

Lojacono had to disagree: “We thought about that ourselves, but they're not insured. They have a hi-tech alarm system that they forgot to turn on.”

Martone made a face: “Well, just think of that. I'll say it again: I'd investigate the two of them. I wouldn't want there to be something else going on here.”

Lojacono stood up. “
Grazie
, Dottoressa. You've been very kind, and let me thank you for working so quickly.”

Rosaria stood up as well: “And I thank you. Di Nardo, why don't you leave me your phone number?” Alex and Lojacono exchanged a glance. “We're doing further tests,” Martone explained, “and I may send the boys over for another inspection. I might have something urgent to communicate, and I believe you, Lieutenant, have other matters to worry about. I wouldn't want to bother you. It's standard for us to get in touch with the lower-ranking partner in cases like this.”

Blushing, Alex murmured her phone number, which Martone jotted down on the burglary file.

“
Grazie
. I assure you I'll make good use of it.”

A
black housekeeper, whose face betrayed keen grief, ushered Romano and Aragona into the living room where Eva awaited them. No attempt to adopt an appropriate facial expression, no special greeting; the woman, who wore a cap and apron, as was standard practice in this, the city's most exclusive neighborhood, was fully absorbed in the atmosphere of grief enveloping the apartment.

Though the household staff, each of whom had certainly been sworn to silence, were nothing but discreet, the officers had still been able to glimpse the same concern for Dodo's safety in the eyes of the concierge and the security guard manning the front gate outside the grounds. Bad news travels like a strong odor, and there's no getting rid of it.

The Borrelli family, formerly the Cerchia family, lived in an apartment whose location made it hard to get to. From the street they went through a narrow gate then along a lane surrounded by greenery that wound halfway up a hill before opening out into a plaza lined with maritime pines, which three buildings, each three stories tall, overlooked: Dodo's apartment was on the third floor of the building in the middle.

The two policemen had walked the entire distance without speaking.

Their visit to the school had added nothing to what little they knew. An increasingly sour Sister Angela and an ever-more heartbroken Sister Beatrice had led them on a tour of the building, an attractive apartment building from the sixties, recently renovated, with a courtyard, gymnasium, and refectory. The student body, some two hundred children ranging in age from five to ten, seemed well disciplined and under the complete control of the teachers: a normal private school for wealthy children in a wealthy neighborhood, as Aragona had remarked acidly in a whispered aside to his partner. The kids' contacts with the outside world were carefully and strictly monitored. The students who weren't taken home on the school's bus waited in a room until their parents or drivers came to pick them up, under the supervision of an alert, powerfully built nun who also served as receptionist. In effect, Romano thought to himself, if someone wanted to kidnap one of the children, this certainly wasn't the place to do it. Better to wait for the right opportunity, like a field trip to a museum.

They'd questioned the teachers of the other classes, the hall monitor, the administrative staff: no one remembered Dodo coming into contact with anyone who wasn't a member of his family, and certainly no one had noticed anything unusual about his behavior. Sister Beatrice had reported certain childish habits—bringing toys to school, for example, especially action figures from the comic books he was so crazy about. Otherwise, Dodo was a normal ten-year-old boy.

Even Sister Angela began to express a certain concern about the persistent lack of news, though this concern was masked by a latent hostility; Romano had noticed that her hands were shaking, and at times she seemed incapable of looking him in the eye. If word got out that one of the students had gone missing, it would be a serious problem for the school. The mere presence of two policemen in the building embarrassed and annoyed her, and it had been with palpable relief that she'd walked them back to their car. The request with which she'd bid them farewell, in a voice just over a whisper, hadn't been to keep her informed about Dodo's fate, but to keep what had happened absolutely secret.

Whereupon Aragona had been unable to resist the temptation to make her sweat just a little: “To the extent that we're able, Sister. To the extent that we're able.”

There was a very different atmosphere in the living room of the Borrelli home. Eva's metamorphosis was complete by now, and the confident, irritated woman they'd met at the museum the day before had been transformed into a grief-stricken mother. She seemed to have aged suddenly; her puffy eyes and wrinkled face offered mute testimony to a sleepless night spent waiting for any scrap of news that might attenuate her immense anguish. She met them as they entered, clutching a handkerchief.

“Have you found anything, any clues? You've been over to the school, haven't you? Did the nuns have anything to tell you? Damn them, when this is all over, I'll make them wish they'd never met us, I promise you that. I'll have that shit-hole shut down. You think your child is safe, and then look what happens, those damn incompetents, with all the money they steal every month, in spite of their so-called vow of poverty.”

Romano had no good news to offer: “I'm afraid not, Signora. Nothing new emerged from our visit to the school. The boy was happy, he showed no signs of being upset or restless. No one noticed anything. Any news here?”

A look of misery crossed Eva's face: “No, of course not. I'd have called you immediately. And like I told the commissario, none of my girlfriends, none of the mothers of Dodo's classmates, saw him yesterday. I can't tell you how excruciating it was to carry on these conversations, as if nothing at all had happened.”

Aragona had walked over to the large wall of windows that offered an incredible vista of the bay; in the distance, sharp and splendid in the clear spring air, the silhouette of the island rose into the blue sky.

The policeman said, without turning around: “
Mamma mia
. I've never seen a view like this. If you live here, I bet you never feel like going anywhere else on vacation.”

Romano sighed: His partner truly was incorrigible.

“Does this strike you,” Eva hissed, venomously, “as the right time to make that sort of comment? Why don't you focus on my son instead, and on trying to find out where he is!”

Aragona looked at her: “My dear woman, your son is in fact exactly what I'm focusing on, and by the way, if you'd focused on him just a little more, I wouldn't have to be doing it now. My inopportune comment springs from the thought that if I wanted to get a lot of money in exchange for a kidnapped child, I'd make sure I took one that belonged to a family who lived in a place just like this one. Tell me something: do you have a lot of money? You, personally, I mean.”

At the young officer's words, a chill promptly descended. Romano was mortified: The question was a reasonable one, but his partner had hardly chosen the best way of framing it. Eva stood openmouthed, frozen to the spot. Then she exploded: “Get out of my house this instant and don't you dare show your face here ever again. My friends are more highly placed than you can even begin to imagine; I can have you kicked off the police force before you draw your next breath.”

Aragona didn't seem particularly impressed. He went into his old glasses-removal routine: “Do as you think best. But listen closely: Anyone who replaces me would have to ask you the exact same question, perhaps with more courtesy, certainly after having wasted a lot more time—and time has never been as precious as it is now. When the moment to get moving comes, we need to be ready, and we don't want to waste essential hours running in the wrong direction. So I'm going to ask you one more time, and by all means, feel free to refuse to answer me, toss me out of your home, or even have me expelled from the country: Does the money belong to you? And if not, whose is it?”

In spite of himself, Romano had to admit he was amused by Aragona's tenacity. Eva let herself fall into the armchair and then said: “I continue to find your manners deeply offensive, officer. And I continue to have an intense desire to kick you out of my home—literally. But lest anyone think that I'm trying to hinder your investigation, I'll answer your question. No, the money isn't mine, and it doesn't belong to my partner Manuel, either; right now Manuel has gone over to my father's house to give him the news, because my father and I aren't on speaking terms. This apartment belongs to my father, the money we live on is money my father gives me and, in part, money from Dodo's father. Now those two, yes, they're both filthy rich. My father built this city in the sixties and seventies. My ex-husband is an industrialist from northern Italy. Is that what you want to know? Satisfied?”

Aragona put his glasses back on.

“Still, living in a place like this makes you look very wealthy indeed. How much is this apartment worth: two million euros? Three? The condominium fees and domestic staff alone must cost you every a month what an average family earns in six.”

“Listen, officer, are you here to find my son or do an audit?”

Romano came to his partner's aid: “Signora, we need to figure out what happened and, if possible, foresee the moves that whoever took the boy is going to make. He might be speaking a bit too directly, but Officer Aragona is just trying to gather useful information. By the way, have you seen Dodo's father?”

The woman ran her hand over her eyes.

“Yes, he was here a couple of hours ago. It wasn't easy. But luckily, if nothing else, he didn't start up again with the usual litany of my countless shortcomings. He's so worried he's going to pieces, same as I am for that matter. Now he's at his place, waiting for news. He lives close by.”

Romano nodded, relieved that Cerchia had managed to keep a lid on his temper. He knew very well how difficult it was not to blow your top when you were under stress.

“And Signor Scarano went to inform your father. Why didn't you just call him yourself? You said that the two of you aren't on speaking terms, but in a situation like this one . . .”

“You see, officer, my father is a very . . . unusual person. He tends to become truly intolerable; perhaps our personalities are too similar for us ever to get along. When my mother was alive, she acted as a buffer between us, but now each of us is barricaded behind castle walls, and we're incapable of communicating. He's never happy with anything I do, none of my choices. He couldn't stand Alberto and he made no mystery of the fact; now he can't stand Manuel, who luckily has a lovely character: he's too intelligent a man to let my father yank his chain.”

Aragona was astonished: “And that's who you sent to give your father the news?”

“Someone had to do it. If I'd gone, it would have turned into World War Three, and I'm in no condition to listen to a tirade about what a failure I've been as a mother. Manuel will listen to the cavalcade of insults without batting an eye, the way he always does. He has an inner equilibrium that saves him, whatever the situation.”

“In any case,” Romano said, “we'll have to talk to him ourselves, unless there are new developments.”

Just then, as if in response to his words, the phone rang.

A
ssistant district attorney Laura Piras sat contemplating the file folders on her document-strewn desk with satisfaction; she had to congratulate herself. Her decision to order wiretaps on all phone lines registered to the Cerchia and Borrelli families had been timely. This was going to prove useful.