The Deliverance of Evil (49 page)

“And you killed Colajacono but decided to spare me?”

Hagi smiled. “We’re getting off track, Balistreri. You’re supposed to tell me who killed Elisa Sordi.”

“Who carved the letters on the victims?”

Hagi started coughing. He spat blood onto the ground. “The same person who carved one on Elisa Sordi,” he answered.

Balistreri knew he was telling the truth.

“You already know who it is.”

“Balistreri, we’re back at the beginning again. It’s you who has to know. You’ve been going around in circles for years. Have you any idea how much damage you’ve caused with your fucking amateurism? If it wasn’t for you . . .” Hagi’s cough swallowed up the end of the sentence.

If it wasn’t for my lack of professionalism Alina Hagi would still be alive. But we only have the future in our hands.

“The letters point to Valerio Bona,” Balistreri said.

Hagi looked at him, laughing. “The letters? At the same time you’re forgetting the suicides of two mothers—that’s another two letters.”

“Another two letters?” Balistreri repeated.

“What kind of killer would carve his own name? This isn’t some nineteenth-century British crime novel. Have you gone and accused poor Valerio Bona?”

You know very well I have, you bastard, because you’re the one who led me down that path.

Hagi looked at the prison wall, as if he could see through it.

“Are you worried yet, Balistreri? And has Cardinal Alessandrini repented for what he did? Will he think about it as he’s reciting prayers with the pope?”

Balistreri had no more cards to play. Fiorella Romani was lost.

Just then Corvu and Piccolo burst into the yard.

“Valerio Bona hanged himself from the mast of his boat,” Corvu announced.

Hagi’s eyes showed a gleam of interest. A Mephistophelian grin appeared on his sick face.

“Finally, someone is repenting in earnest, Balistreri.”

Balistreri reeled at the news. He turned to Hagi. “Valerio Bona didn’t kill Elisa Sordi or any of the other victims. He just lied about what happened.”

“Everybody lied. A very grave sin. But not everyone’s paid the price like I have. Now it’s their turn to pay. Only the judge is not your benevolent God, Balistreri. The judge happens to be me.”

“Mr. Hagi, I’ll pay any price if you’ll spare Fiorella Romani.”

Hagi leaned against the wall. “Give me another cigarette,” he said, coughing.

Strangely, smoking seemed to calm his cough. Hagi spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground.

“I want an answer by tomorrow noon, Balistreri. If you give me the right answer, Fiorella Romani’s life will be saved. Now pay close attention, I already know something here. If you try to trick me, Fiorella dies.”

“What do I have to do?”

“There’s another reason Cardinal Alessandrini forced Gina Giansanti to lie. Make him confess his sins in full. Show me that you know how to act like a policeman outside the gates of paradise as well as inside them.”

. . . .

Balistreri sent Corvu and Piccolo back to the office, arranging to meet them again at eight the following morning. He left the prison by himself a little after midnight after that infinitely long day. The Saturday night partying around the Tiber was in full swing with rows of vehicles tooting horns, crowds with beers and ice cream cones, open-air restaurants jam-packed.

Only twenty-four hours had passed since he’d fled from Linda Nardi’s and himself. He walked on, staggering with fatigue. He’d been deceived by everyone: Gina Giansanti, Cardinal Alessandrini, Manfredi, the count, Valerio Bona, Ajello, even by Angelo and Linda, up to the point where he now found himself in a labyrinth—and Marius Hagi was holding the thread.

He needed to sleep, to sort out the ideas that were scattered around like playing cards by the gust of his emotions. But he needed peace to find that sleep.

He hadn’t dialed that number for over two years. Antonella answered at the first ring. She was at home, alone, and said she’d be waiting for him.

He found her in an old sweatsuit, her eyes puffy and underlined with dark shadows. Despite everything, Pasquali had been a courteous and properly behaved boss toward her—something rare for the time. Balistreri knew, however, that those tears were partly wasted. Pasquali had gone to Casilino 900 with a gun in his hand, intending to kill Marius Hagi and put a lid on the whole business, but someone smarter and more powerful had decided otherwise and had drawn him into a deadly trap. But there was no point in saying this to Antonella.

Seeing him in such a state, she made him lie on the sofa with his head resting on her knees, and lit one of those joints that, during the years of their relationship, he had always disdainfully refused.

“What was Pasquali like during his last few days?” Balistreri asked, exhaling slowly.

“Pretty much the way you are right now. Of course, for Pasquali if the knot in his tie was crooked or he had a hair out of place, he felt as miserable as you look right now.”

Antonella stretched out an arm and picked up a small book from the table.

“I cleaned out Pasquali’s office, Michele. This calendar was in a hidden drawer.”

It was a small black calendar, the size of a deck of cards. It was for 2006. Balistreri was reminded of Coppola’s calendar, handed over by his son, which had reopened the case. He leafed through Pasquali’s calendar, but his eyes kept fluttering closed. There were no names and no numbers, no appointments. Several dates were circled and there were a few cryptic notes.

Antonella slowly ran her fingers through his hair and caressed his face. Those dates were familiar, but his fatigued brain didn’t know why. At last, he closed his eyes and slept.

Sunday, July 23, 2006

Morning

H
E WAS AWAKENED ON
Antonella’s sofa by a cell phone ringing. It was Corvu calling. It was already eight thirty, and they were waiting for him in the office. While he took an ice-cold shower, Antonella made him a double espresso and some toast. He smoked two cigarettes as he drank his coffee.

“You’re back on caffeine and tobacco?” There was no reproach in her voice; actually, she appeared to approve.

“I flushed all my pills, too, together with some old ways of thinking.”

Antonella smiled. “Now you just have to get back to having sex. Or have you already started?”

He gave her a light kiss on the lips and called a taxi.

Corvu, Piccolo, and Mastroianni had been in the office since six that morning, trying to reconstruct the case from the beginning.

“In light of the new information, I’ve checked out all the alibis for Elisa Sordi’s death. I hope you don’t mind, but I also checked up on Angelo Dioguardi,” Corvu said apologetically.

“You did very well, Corvu. Go ahead, I’m listening.”

“Okay. We know for certain that Elisa Sordi was alive at five o’clock when she spoke to her mother on the phone, because it shows up in the phone records. Immediately after, or immediately before, the concierge came up to her and took the work she’d finished to Cardinal Alessandrini. Then Manfredi paid Elisa a visit, or else he was already there when she received her mother’s call. He stayed there for about twenty minutes, while Balistreri and Dioguardi arrived at the main gate and were talking to Gina Giansanti. Manfredi was still in Elisa’s office when Angelo came in and went up in the elevator. He heard the cardinal open the door. Manfredi left Elisa beaten unconscious, if we believe him. He locked the door, went to his building, and called his father, who was at the Hotel Camilluccia, which is about five minutes away—we checked. Then he went out onto the terrace and saw Balistreri talking to the concierge through his binoculars. He went to his room, where he started cutting himself with a razor blade and moaning. That woke his mother. The count arrived after a few minutes, met Balistreri, exchanged a couple of words with him, and went up to the penthouse, while Gina Giansanti was getting ready to go to Mass. As Balistreri was walking over to Building B he met Father Paul coming out, then went up in the elevator to the top floor, where Angelo Dioguardi and the cardinal were waiting for him. Father Paul left the complex with Gina Giansanti. She went to Mass, and he went back to San Valente.”

Corvu paused to consult his notes.

“Valerio Bona took advantage of the concierge’s absence—she’d left with Father Paul—and, following Balistreri, entered Building B. He went to see Elisa and found her dead. That is, Valerio thought she was dead. Manfredi swears he left her unconscious. One of the two is lying or mistaken, or she died in the interim. The six people in the Via della Camilluccia complex all moved around at six o’clock. Balistreri, Dioguardi, and Cardinal Alessandrini came down and saw the count and Ulla leaving in their car and Manfredi on his bike. From that point on we know exactly where five of these people were. Balistreri and Dioguardi went to watch the game, while the cardinal, Ulla, and Manfredi were at the Vatican. And we know the count went to see the minister of the interior. At the time, the police checked the registers and found he went in at six fifty and left at seven thirty five.”

“Corvu, I want you to get a complete copy of the ministry’s logbooks.”

Balistreri pointed to the blackboard where they’d put the letters in chronological order.

O (Elisa)

? (Ulla)

A (Alina)

R (Samantha)

E (Nadia)

? (Giovanna)

V (Selina)

I (Ornella)

? (Fiorella)

“For the three we don’t know, we can use what Hagi said about his wife, Alina,” Mastroianni said. “Where there’s no letter carved, we should use the first letters of their first names.”

“I have my doubts about the last letter being an F,” Corvu said.

It depends on what they find carved there, he thought, but avoided saying it.

“So we have O U A R E G V I F. But it doesn’t have to be in that order,” Piccolo said.

“I’ve read up on similar cases. The order is part of the obsessive behavior and is always important.”

Balistreri lost patience. “These letters tell me nothing.” And yet in his mind a memory was stirring. It took shape, rose and fell, and disappeared. It was something he had seen somewhere.

Piccolo took the floor. “Valerio Bona’s death was a suicide. After being questioned he went to Ostia—two witnesses saw him getting onto a boat by himself and going out to sea as it was getting dark. He anchored in a quiet cove. The boat was five hundred yards from the shore. A finance police patrol boat sighted it around ten. Valerio Bona had hanged himself from the mast.”

Piccolo paused, then said, “He left a note. It’s confirmed that it’s in his handwriting”

She looked down at the piece of paper and began to read.

“We should have told the truth then, but we weren’t brave enough. I leave my punishment in God’s hands.”

“Was it addressed to anyone?” Balistreri asked.

“Not the note, but there is something else,” Piccolo said. “There was a single outgoing call from Valerio Bona’s cell phone after he was questioned. The phone company checked the records: the call was to the Vatican switchboard.”

. . . .

This time Cardinal Alessandrini’s personal assistant was adamant. The cardinal was celebrating Mass, then he had to accompany the wife of a foreign head of state on a private visit to the Sistine Chapel, and then he had to go over the pope’s sermon for the Angelus, which he would give at noon from Val D’Aosta where he was on vacation.

Balistreri knew he’d already overstepped his boundaries, but made up his mind to force the situation. A spat between the Italian state and the Vatican paled in comparison to the life of Fiorella Romani.

He called Floris at nine that morning, went to meet him, and spelled out his plan. The chief of police heard him out attentively, his reactions somewhere between incredulity and horror. Finally he smiled and shook Balistreri’s hand.

Floris called the minister of the interior. The minister was strongly opposed to it, but Floris pointed out that Balistreri was a loose cannon and would certainly get in touch with Linda Nardi to call a press conference if things did not go his way.

The minister called the prime minister’s undersecretary, a man famously close to Vatican circles. Only the explicit threat of a press conference, during the course of which Balistreri would attribute direct responsibility for Fiorella Romani’s death to the cardinal, persuaded the undersecretary to call Alessandrini. He made his apologies, saying that Balistreri was out of control and would be replaced as soon as possible but suggested that the Church, already under accusation for its defense of Roma rights, might like to try to avoid any further trouble. The cardinal allowed Balistreri thirty minutes at ten sharp in the Sistine Chapel. Although he had lived in Rome for so many years, Balistreri had never been there.

Alessandrini’s assistant was shocked and disgusted by Balistreri’s scruffy appearance. The cardinal arrived punctually, dressed in his vestments. Coming dressed like this further underlined the light years’ distance between them, a gap that Balistreri had only a few minutes to bridge.

The greeting was extremely cold. “I thought we had finished with our reciprocal confessions,” Alessandrini said instantly. “Nevertheless, let’s take a walk together—perhaps it will do your spirit good. I hope it’s in a better state than your appearance.”

They walked slowly, while Balistreri tried to gather all his strength. He was there for one reason only and could not allow himself to be distracted either by his contempt for the cardinal or by the wonderful ceiling that people from all over the world came to admire.

“You don’t have much time, Eminence, and Fiorella Romani has even less.”

“I told you everything I know yesterday.”

“Marius Hagi says Fiorella Romani will die this afternoon unless you tell me—”

Alessandrini held up a hand to stop him and came to a halt before
The
Last Judgment.
Christ presided over the scene, directing a severe gaze at those descending into the pits of hell; beside him sat the Virgin Mary, looking away, resigned.

“What do you see, Captain Balistreri?” Alessandrini asked.

“I see a God who strikes fear and beside him a woman who looks unhappy because she doesn’t have the power to make decisions. I see miserable people looking horrified, no matter which side they fall on. There may be justice in this painting, but I see no mercy.”

Alessandrini was lost in thought. “Evil is a part of the divine plan, Balistreri. Christians like Gina Giansanti know that and accept it as a test. They wait for the moment you see depicted here, when God metes out justice.”

A lesson in theology. He doesn’t want to help me. Or can’t. It’s part of the divine plan!

Balistreri took an envelope from his pocket and showed Alessandrini the photographs of Elisa, Samantha, Nadia, Selina, and Ornella. Burns, bruises, letters carved into their flesh.

Alessandrini wouldn’t touch them. He moved sharply away and walked toward the exit. Balistreri looked desperately at his watch—his time was up. He saw the master of ceremonies with the wife of the head of state already waiting. The cardinal was some distance away when he turned back toward him.

“Pass on our conversation to Marius Hagi. Tell him to listen to the Angelus address.”

. . . .

Balestreri called Floris on his cell phone to tell him about the conversation while he drove back once again with Corvu through the traffic in the morning heat to Regina Coeli prison.

“The prime minister and the minister of the interior are very concerned,” the chief of police informed him.

“About relations with the Vatican, I imagine, not about Fiorella Romani.”

“Balistreri, I’m not worried about my position. We already have too many deaths to mourn, and there’s no point in useless debate. Offer Hagi anything you can.”

“The man’s dying,sir. We only have the truth to offer him.”

“What are you thinking of doing?”

“I’m going to do what Cardinal Alessandrini said. I’ll tell Hagi about our conversation.”

“But he didn’t tell you anything,” Floris protested.

“Let’s let Hagi be the judge of that.”

The graffiti on the city’s walls incited people to set fire to the camps. So-called civic organizations were having their say. Political posters proposed drastic solutions.

If Fiorella Romani dies, it’ll start a riot. Hagi’s always known that. It’s part of his plan.

They got to the prison at eleven thirty. Hagi was waiting in an interrogation room that had been equipped with a television, as Balistreri had requested.

Balistreri told him everything—the alibis, Valerio Bona’s suicide note, his conversation with Cardinal Alessandrini about
The Last Judgment
.

Hagi nodded, pleased with the news of Valerio Bona’s phone call to the Vatican, but it was the conversation with Alessandrini that really piqued his interest. He asked for it to be repeated to him twice with barely concealed satisfaction.

Then he turned to Balistreri. “So? What’s the answer to my question?”

“I’ll tell you after the Angelus.”

“Then let me have a cigarette.” There was no smoking in the room. Balistreri lit one for Hagi and one for himself.

At noon, the television was going to start broadcasting live from Les Combes in Val D’Aosta, where the pope was spending his vacation.

“Dear brothers and sisters.”

The pope was smiling and full of energy. He spoke about the Middle East, expressing solidarity with the unfortunates there. Then he changed the subject.

“Yesterday we celebrated the memorial of St. Mary Magdalene, Our Lord’s disciple, who occupies a prominent place in the Gospels.”

The pope went on with his sermon about Mary Magdalene, then came to the end. Hagi perked up and leaned toward the television set.

“Mary Magdalene’s story teaches us a fundamental truth: a disciple of Christ is someone who, in the experience that is human weakness, has the humility to ask him for help, is healed by him, and follows him closely, thereby becoming a witness to the power of his merciful love, which is stronger than sin and death.”

The pope ended with a reminder about the situation in the Middle East. Then he began to recite the Angelus.

“You can turn it off.” Hagi was lost in thought. Then he came out of it and glanced at the clock on the wall. It was twelve forty.

“I’d like the answer to my question, Balistreri.”

“The cardinal lied because he presumed he could distinguish between good and evil, and now he’s humiliating himself like Mary Magdalene before God and asking for your help. He lied out of fear that we would accuse two young men, who he maintained were innocent, of a terrible crime. One was Manfredi.”

Hagi was wracked by coughs. Balistreri could see the veins pulsating under his transparent temples and the bones sticking out over the ever-deeper hollows in his cheeks.

He’s dying. And Fiorella Romani with him.

“And what will you do now, Balistreri?”

“I swear to you that Elisa Sordi’s killer will be punished, whoever he is. But I beg you to save Fiorella Romani. She doesn’t deserve this. She’s not guilty of anything.”

“Do you think my wife was guilty of something?”

Balistreri shook his head.

“No, Alina was guilty of nothing. But it was her fear of you and bad luck that killed her, not a murderer who tortures, strangles, and carves flesh.”

Hagi said, “Wrong! It was your wretched Catholic religion that killed her! It was Anna Rossi, Valerio Bona, Cardinal Alessandrini, and that young priest with the red hair—”

“Father Paul.”

Hagi was coughing and spitting blood. “Yes, Father Paul, who had lunch with Elisa that Sunday, the last day of her life. Alina told me. She saw them together near the parish. And she saw Valerio Bona there, too, spying on them.”