The Deliverance of Evil (32 page)

“When I questioned Tatò he was worried, then relaxed, and then worried again at the end of the meeting.”

“So you think he lied about something at the beginning and at the end of questioning?”

“At the start we were talking about Colajacono’s idea of their taking the night shift. I checked the registry office records. Actually, Colajacono lives alone in Rome—his parents are already dead and his closest relatives live outside the city. But not Tatò. He’s from the South, so his parents don’t live in Rome, but he has a younger sister in the city who lives by herself. She works as a cashier in a supermarket.”

“But we don’t know if they usually spend Christmas together.”

“We do now,” Piccolo replied triumphantly. “Since Tatò move to Rome they’ve spent every Christmas Eve together. I sent Mastroianni to the supermarket where she works. She was really upset when her brother told her that he couldn’t come over. They got into a fight.”

Balistreri said, “I need a smoke—let’s go outside.”

He had two cigarettes left because of the flight—and he really needed them.

Outside it was almost dark; the lights were on in store windows. The Roman neighborhood was swarming with people coming and going in the supermarkets, shops, and bars. There were a large number of immigrants in the area, and there was angry graffiti about the camps on the walls. That evening the city council was expected to reach a decision with a very narrow margin.

His train of thought was full of heavy consequences that Balistreri had no wish to discuss at that moment. He limited himself to asking a question: “Why did he choose Tatò?”

“Because the alibi’s false and only Tatò would go along with it,” Piccolo said.

“What alibi are you talking about?”

“The one Tatò’s giving Colajacono . . .”

“An alibi for what?”

Piccolo looked at him in surprise. “What do you think? For Nadia’s kidnapping and murder.”

“No, that doesn’t hold up. You said yourself that Tatò was relaxed while telling you about it, so according to your interpretation, he wasn’t lying.”

Piccolo showed her irritation. “Not necessarily. Suppose Colajacono was in the Giulia GT on Via di Torricola at six thirty in a hat and sunglasses.”

“That’s precisely why it doesn’t hold up.”

Piccolo finally saw his point. “Shit, you’re right. He would have said that Colajacono was at Mass too between six and seven to give him an alibi.”

He let her chew on that for a moment, then he said, “I think both of them are lying. But we still don’t know exactly what about. And we don’t know why.”

Piccolo looked as if she still had something important to say. She walked on in gloomy silence.

They found themselves outside the Torre Spaccata police station. “Did you bring me here on purpose?” Balistreri asked.

Now Piccolo avoided looking him in the face. “I’ve done something, Captain Balistreri.”

Balistreri was seriously worried, but the reality was worse than anything he could have imagined.

He listened with growing horror to the account of the exploits of Linda Nardi and Giulia Piccolo at the Marius Travel agency and then at Casilino 900. He was angry, but what could he do? Slap her? He risked getting hit back. Send her packing from the special team? He’d lose a formidable member of the team. Giulia Piccolo was just like the young Michele Balistreri. Besides, Linda Nardi was the one who was really at fault. She seemed so polite and gentle, but she had a spine of steel. Finally, he realized that he was angry not with the two women, but with Colajacono, for what he had dared to do to Linda Nardi.

That pig had no right to go anywhere near her.

. . . .

He sent Piccolo back to the office and went into the police station. Colajacono’s door was open. The deputy captain was sitting with his feet up on his desk; he was chewing an unlit cigar. He made no move to get up or offer Balistreri a seat when he appeared in the doorway.

Colajacono pointed at the piles of paper on his desk. “Look at this, Balistreri. More than one hundred crimes reported. Nothing a big shot like you has to worry about. Purse snatching, petty theft, a little breaking and entering, a few stolen cars. And in ninety percent of the cases the perpetrators are your friends the Roma.”

Balistreri didn’t respond. Colajacono swung his feet to the floor. “What do you want? I’m warning you right now, we’re on my turf here, so don’t piss me off.”

He was very sure of himself. He must have found a way to solve the problem with Linda Nardi and Piccolo.

Balistreri stood right in front of him. “Someone on the morning of December 24 was scared. A small object from a nightclub had disappeared. Nadia had stolen it. So this person asked you to stay in the station and slow down the investigation into Nadia’s disappearance. This person told you the girl had been with a politician as part of a blackmail scheme. You’d already helped out with something similar. But actually they were buying time to retrieve the object.”

Colajacono shrugged, unmoved. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Balistreri. If you have any proof, show it to me. Otherwise it’s all hot air. Business as usual for you bureaucrats.”

“By turning away Ramona Iordanescu, you held up the start of an investigation for several days. I have proof of that.”

“Doesn’t matter. Nadia was already dead. The autopsy report says she was killed before nine on the evening of December 24. It doesn’t change anything.”

“It might have made it easier to catch the killer,” Balistreri said.

But Colajacono didn’t bat an eyelash. “Vasile’s the murderer. We’ve caught him and he’s in prison. And it’s thanks to my informants, certainly not yours.”

He’s being sincere; they’ve made an idiot out of him and caught him in a trap. He really believes it was the shepherd.

Images of Colajacono tearing the clothes off of Linda Nardi were torturing Balistreri. It had taken him many years and much remorse to manage his anger and become a good policeman, sensible and prudent. But that thought was too much for him.

He looked Colajacono straight in the face and said, “Vasile did not strangle Nadia.”

Colajacono was taken aback for a minute by Balistreri’s tone of conviction. Then he pulled himself together. “Yet more conjecture from an intellectual policeman, Balistreri. Listen to me: go back to your office in the city and thank God I’m not decking you right now.”

He stripped Linda, this prick of a racist, this animal in policeman’s uniform.

Anger prevailed completely over prudence. The words slipped from him without control, as they had so many years ago.

“Vasile’s left wrist was sprained several days before Nadia was killed. That was why he screamed so much when you grabbed him. We have the medical report. There’s not the slightest possibility that he strangled Nadia.”

Madness, Balistreri, sheer madness. They should expel you from the force.

He saw Colajacono turned pale and suddenly get. He jumped to his feet and got in Balistreri’s face. “What the fuck are you talking about?” he hissed, closing in.

Balistreri moved to the door. He could take Colajacono, but he hadn’t regressed that far. A fight would have marked the end of the investigation, or at least his role in it. He chose to land a verbal uppercut instead.

“You fucking moron. They had you stay here with Tatò so you wouldn’t have an alibi for the time they murdered Nadia.”

The effect was a lot worse than a physical uppercut. As he made his way toward the main entrance, he gave Colajacono a last look. He was as white as a sheet, leaning against the wall, staring into space. He had understood he was sitting at a card table where the stakes were too high for him.

. . . .

When Balistreri returned to the office late in the afternoon, Margherita told him that Corvu needed to speak to him urgently.

“Have him come into my office.” He pointed at the flower in the glass on her desk and winked at her. She blushed.

Corvu had the agitated manner of a high-school student the day before final exams.

“Captain, I’m being followed.”

Balistreri cursed under his breath and felt anxiety as well as anger growing inside him for the members of his team who were too enterprising.

“Followed where? Weren’t you supposed to be in the office today?”

Corvu looked at the floor. Balistreri had come to expect this kind of loose-cannon behavior from Piccolo, but not from Corvu.

The deputy hastened to explain. “First, I analyzed all the data we have on Nadia. I spoke to Forensics and asked for any information. There were traces of bodily fluids that point to DNA from a single party. It’s definitely Vasile’s DNA.”

He took Balistreri’s silence as encouragement to continue.

“Then I compared the alibis of all the possible suspects between six and nine on December 24.” He held out a chart.

Balistreri saw “solid alibi” written beside the names of Greg, Mircea, Adrian, and Giorgi and “incomplete or unsupported alibi” written next to those of Hagi, Colajacono, Tatò, and Ajello. The last name caught him by surprise.

“How do you know what Ajello did on the evening of December 24?” he asked. He didn’t like seeing that name there.

“I called ENT and Ajello’s secretary said that he was coming back from Monte Carlo this evening. So I said that we urgently needed to check the books of Bella Blu in order to get confirmation of the date that Camarà was hired. She got in touch with Ajello, who said it was okay.”

“And you went over to ENT?”

Corvu was looking at his shoes. “With Mastroianni,” he whispered.

Balistreri gripped the arms of his chair until his knuckles were white, and he clamped his lips so tight he crushed the unlit cigarette he had stuck in his mouth

Damn Corvu! And damn Mastroianni with his big-time Italian hotshot looks!

When he felt he had regained control over himself and was ready for the worst, he said, “Tell me exactly what happened.”

Corvu continued to address his shoes.

“We went there by bus. When we got to ENT I introduced Mastroianni to Ajello’s secretary as an accounting expert. She had put Bella Blu’s books in a meeting room. She offered us some tea, and Mastroianni left the room with her a couple of times on the pretext of making some photocopies. Then he asked her what some abbreviations meant. He kept talking to her. She was distracted and flattered, of course. I excused myself to go to the bathroom.”

“And you checked his calendar.” It wasn’t a question.

Corvu nodded. “Ajello’s last appointment in his office on December 24 at six thirty. Then the diary was empty until seven, when it said ‘Grand Hotel: Cocktails.’”

Balistreri groaned softly. Then he waited in silence, resigned.

“I called the Grand Hotel and asked for the manager with the excuse that I was from the finance police and I was auditing a catering company. I asked if there had been a reception there in on the evening of December 24. They told me that every Christmas Eve there was a cocktail party at at seven for the members of a charity group that raised funds for a humanitarian organization. It’ll be easy to check whether Ajello was there and whether he wrote a check.”

Balistreri stood, and Corvu took a step backward. “Corvu, you will not do one more thing that involves ENT, Bella Blu, or Ajello. If you step out of line I’ll send you back to the Sardinian mountains to count goats. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Captain,” Corvu mumbled.

“Now tell me why you think you’re being followed,” Balistreri ordered.

“I noticed him when I was on the bus, coming back. He was the only one to get on with us. I didn’t see him on the way there, but it was the same guy who was following us the other day.”

Evening

There wasn’t a minute to lose. The actions of Piccolo and Corvu and his own words to Colajacono had flipped the switch on a ticking time bomb. He summoned Coppola and Mastroianni.

“I want you to follow Colajacono and not let him out of your sight. Take turns and don’t let yourselves be seen. Now get a move on.”

“I wanted to tell you that I haven’t tracked down Fred Cabot yet, but I spoke to Carmen again and she mentioned something strange,” Coppola said.

“I don’t give a shit, Coppola. One of you has to be outside the police station before Colajacono’s shift ends, and it’s almost eight.”

Mastroianni raised his hand like an elementary school student with good comportment. “Coppola will have to go first. I need to be at the airport at midnight to bring in Ramona Iordanescu to spend the night for security purposes.”

“But I’ve got my son’s basketball game. Tonight’s the championship,” Coppola protested.

Balistreri tilted his head at him. “Coppola, there will be other games. Stick close to Colajacono and don’t let him out of your sight. This is important.”

Coppola reacted just as Balistreri expected. “Captain, you’re right. Ciro will play in lots of championship games. I’ll follow Colajacono to the gates of hell.”

Left to himself, Balistreri went over again what they knew. Bella Blu had been chosen as a meeting place to introduce Nadia to someone. Then a real disaster happened. By pure coincidence, Camarà had a urinary tract infection and urgently needed to pee. He went down to the toilet. As he passed the private lounge, he saw Nadia with someone. The person who’d organized Nadia’s death for the following day sensed he was in danger. And so he did away with Camarà, faking an argument with a motorcyclist.

But that wasn’t enough. On the morning of December 24, the cleaning woman noted that a lighter in the private lounge needed replacing. They called whoever had been with Nadia in the lounge, but he didn’t know anything about it. A link between Bella Blu, ENT, and a future crime was absolutely unacceptable. They figured they’d find the lighter on Nadia when they killed her, but they didn’t. They panicked and called Mircea and Greg, figuring that Ramona must have it, but in order to protect Bella Blu they didn’t say what they were looking for. Rudi would have given them the lighter if he’d known they wanted it.

What troubled Balistreri most was the inevitability. Up until December 23, nothing had happened that would compromise Bella Blu, ENT, or its shareholders. They could have waited. They didn’t have to kill Camarà right away, or Nadia. They could have changed their plans. But it was as if there had been no other choice. Despite all the risks, the plan had to move forward. So Camarà died, Nadia died, and they beat up Ramona and Rudi in order to find the lighter. They continued to search for it in Nadia and Ramona’s room and happened to be surprised by Piccolo and Rudi.