Doctored Evidence (2 page)

‘Dottor Carlotti?' the uniformed officer who had not helped in unloading the boat asked.

‘Yes.'

‘It was you who called?' Both men knew the question was unnecessary.

‘Yes.'

‘Could you tell me more? Why you were here?'

‘I came to visit a patient of mine – I come every week – Maria Grazia Battestini, and when I went into the apartment, I found her on the floor. She was dead.'

‘You have a key?' the policeman asked. Though his voice was neutral, the question filled the air around them with suspicion.

‘Yes. I've had one for the last few years. I have the keys to the homes of many of my patients,' Carlotti said, then stopped, realizing how strange it must sound, his explaining this to the police, and made uncomfortable by the realization.

‘Would you tell me exactly what you found?' the policeman asked. As the two men spoke, the others deposited the equipment inside the front door and went back to the launch for more.

‘She's dead. Someone's killed her.'

‘Why are you sure someone killed her?'

‘Because I've seen her,' Carlotti said and left it at that.

‘Have you any idea who might have done it, Dottore?'

‘No, of course I don't know who he was,' the Doctor insisted, trying to sound indignant but managing only to sound nervous.

‘He?'

‘What?' said Carlotti.

‘You said, “he”, Dottore. I was curious to know why you think it was a man.'

Carlotti started to answer, but the neutral words he tried to pronounce slipped out of his control and, instead, he said, ‘Take a look at her head and tell me a woman did that.'

His anger surprised him; or rather, the force of it did. He was angry not with the policeman's questions but at his own craven response to them. He had done nothing wrong, had merely stumbled upon the old woman's body, and yet his unthinking response to any brush with authority was fear and the certainty that it would somehow cause him harm. What a race of cowards we've become, he caught himself thinking, but then the policeman asked, ‘Where is she?'

‘On the second floor.'

‘Is the door open?'

‘Yes.'

The policeman stepped into the dim hallway, where the others had crowded to escape the sunshine, and made an upward motion with his chin. Then he said to the doctor, ‘I want you to come upstairs with us.'

Carlotti followed the policemen, resolved to say as little as possible and not to display any unease or fear. He was accustomed to the sight
of death, so the sight of the woman's body, terrible as it was, had not affected him as much as had his instinctive fear of being involved with the police.

At the top of the stairs, the policemen entered the apartment without bothering to knock; the doctor chose to wait outside on the landing. For the first time in fifteen years, he wanted a cigarette with a need so strong it forced the beat of his heart into a quicker rhythm.

He listened to them moving around inside the apartment, heard their voices calling to one another, though he made no attempt to listen. The voices grew softer as the policemen moved to the next room, where the body was. He moved over to the windowsill and half sat on it, heedless of the accumulated filth. He wondered why they needed him here, came close to a decision to tell them they could reach him at his surgery if they wanted him. But he remained where he was and did not go into the apartment to speak to them.

After a time, the policeman who had spoken to him came out into the corridor, holding some papers in a plastic-gloved hand. ‘Was someone staying here with her?' he asked.

‘Yes.'

‘Who?'

‘I don't know her name, but I think she was a Romanian.'

The policeman held out one of the papers to him. It was a form that had been filled in by hand. At the bottom left was a passport-sized
photo of a round-faced woman who could have been the Romanian. ‘Is this the woman?' the policeman asked.

‘I think so,' Dottor Carlotti answered.

‘Florinda Ghiorghiu,' the policeman read, and that brought the name back.

‘Yes. Flori,' the doctor said. Then, curious, he asked, ‘Is she in there?' hoping the police would not find it strange that he had not looked for her, and hoping they had not found her body.

‘Hardly,' the policeman answered with barely disguised impatience. ‘There's no sign of her, and the place is a mess. Someone's been through it and taken anything valuable.'

‘You think . . .' Carlotti began, but the policeman cut him off.

‘Of course,' the officer answered with anger so fierce it surprised the other man. ‘She's from the East. They're all like that. Vermin.' Before Carlotti could object, the policeman went on, spitting out the words. ‘There's an apron in the kitchen with blood all over it. The Romanian killed her.' And then, speaking the epitaph for Maria Grazia Battestini that Dottor Carlotti would perhaps not have given, the policeman muttered, ‘Poor old thing.'

THE POLICE OFFICER
in charge, Lieutenant Scarpa, told Dottor Carlotti that he could go home but warned him that he was not to leave the city without police permission. So rich was Scarpa's tone with insinuations of undetected guilt that whatever resistance Carlotti might have offered died unspoken, and he left.

The next person to arrive was Dottor Ettore Rizzardi,
medico legale
for the city of Venice and thus officially responsible for declaring the victim dead and for making the first speculation as to the time of that event. Coolly, if somewhat excessively polite with Lieutenant Scarpa, Rizzardi stated that Signora Battestini had apparently died as the result of a series of blows to the head, a judgement he believed would be
confirmed by the autopsy. As to the time of death, Dr Rizzardi, after taking the temperature of the corpse, said that, the flies notwithstanding, it had probably been between two and four hours earlier, thus some time between ten and noon. At the look on Scarpa's face, the doctor added that he could be more precise after the autopsy, but it was highly unlikely that she had been dead longer than that. As to the weapon that had killed her, Rizzardi would say no more than that it was some sort of heavy object, perhaps metal, perhaps wood, with grooved or rough edges. He said this unaware of the blood-smeared bronze statue of the recently beatified Padre Pio, already placed in a transparent plastic evidence bag and waiting to be taken to the lab for fingerprinting.

The body having been examined and photographed, Scarpa ordered it taken to the Ospedale Civile for autopsy, telling Rizzardi that he wanted it done quickly. He ordered the members of the crime team to begin searching the apartment, although from its wild disorder it was clear that this had already been done. After Rizzardi's silent departure, the lieutenant chose to search the small room at the back of the house that had apparently belonged to Florinda Ghiorghiu. Not much larger than a closet, the room appeared not to have suffered the attentions of whoever had searched the living room. It contained a narrow bed and a set of shelves curtained by a worn piece of fabric that had perhaps once been a tablecloth. When Scarpa
pulled the cloth to one side, he saw two folded blouses and an equal number of changes of underwear. A pair of black tennis shoes stood side by side on the floor. On the windowsill beside the bed were a photograph in a cheap cardboard frame of three small children, and a book he didn't bother to examine. Inside a cardboard folder he found photocopies of official documents: the first two pages of Florinda Ghiorghiu's Romanian passport and copies of her Italian residence and work permits. Born in 1953, her occupation was given as ‘domestic helper'. There was a second-class return train ticket between Bucharest and Venice, the second half still unused. Because there was no table and no chair in the room, there was no other surface to inspect.

Lieutenant Scarpa pulled out his
telefonino
and called the Questura to get the number for the Frontier Police at Villa Opicina. Calling the number, he gave his name and rank and a brief account of the murder. He asked when the next train from Venice was expected to cross the border. Saying that their suspect might be on that train and firmly emphasizing that the killer was Romanian, he added that, should she manage to reach Romania, there was little chance of extraditing her, so it was of the utmost importance that she be removed from the train.

He said he'd fax her photo as soon as he got to the Questura, re-emphasized the viciousness of the crime, and hung up.

Leaving the scene of crime team to continue
its examination of the apartment, Scarpa ordered the pilot to take him back to the Questura, where he faxed Ghiorghiu's form to the Frontier Police, hoping that the photo would come through clearly. That done, Lieutenant Scarpa went to speak to his superior, Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta, to inform him of the speed with which violent crime was being pursued.

In Villa Opicina, the fax came through as the officer in charge of the Frontier Police, Captain Luca Peppito, was phoning the
capostazione
at the railway station, telling him that the Zagreb express would have to be halted long enough to allow him and his men to search for a violent killer who was attempting to flee the country. Peppito replaced the phone, checked that his pistol was loaded, and went downstairs to collect his men.

Twenty minutes later, the Intercity to Zagreb pulled into the station and slowed to a halt that normally lasted only long enough for the engines to be changed and the passengers' passports to be checked. In recent years, customs inspection between these two minor players in the game of a united Europe had become perfunctory and generally led to nothing more than the payment of duty on the odd carton of cigarettes or bottle of grappa which were no longer viewed as a threat to the economic survival of either nation.

Peppito had sent men to both ends of the train and placed two more at the entrance to the
station; all were under orders to examine the passports of any female passengers alighting from the train.

Three men climbed on at the back of the train and started to work their way forward, examining the passengers in every compartment and checking that no one was in the toilets, while Peppito and a pair of officers began the same process, working backwards from the first carriage.

It was Peppito's sergeant who spotted her, sitting in a window seat in a second-class compartment, in the first carriage behind the engine. He almost overlooked her because she was asleep or pretending to be, her head turned towards the window and resting against it. He saw the broad Slavic planes of her face, her hair grown out white at the roots for lack of care, and the squat, muscular frame so common among women from the East. Two other people sat in the compartment, a large red-faced man reading a German-language newspaper, and an older man working on one of the word puzzles in
Settimana Enigmistica
. Peppito slid the door back, banging it against the frame. That shook the woman awake; she looked about her with startled eyes. The two men looked up at the uniformed officers, and the older one asked, ‘
Sì
?' expressing his irritation only in the tone.

‘Gentlemen, leave the compartment,' commanded Peppito. Before either of them could protest, he allowed his right hand to wander over to the butt of his pistol. The men, making
no attempt to take their suitcases, left the compartment. The woman, seeing the men leave, got to her feet, acting as though she thought the order was meant for her as well.

As she tried to squeeze past Peppito, he gripped her left forearm with a firm hand. ‘Documents, Signora,' he spat out.

She looked up at him, her eyes blinking quickly. ‘
Cosa
?' she said nervously.

‘
Documenti
,' he repeated, louder.

She smiled nervously, a placatory tightening of the muscles of her face, demonstrative of harmlessness and good will, but he saw the way her eyes shifted down the corridor towards the door. ‘
Sì, Sì, Signore. Momento. Momento
,' she said in an accent so strong the words were almost incomprehensible.

A plastic bag hung from her right hand. ‘
La borsa
,' Peppito said, indicating the bag, which was from Billa, and meant to hold groceries.

At his gesture, she whipped the bag behind her. ‘
Mia, mia
,' she said, stating possession but demonstrating fear.

‘
La borsa, Signora
,' Peppito said and reached for it.

She turned halfway round, but Peppito was a strong man and managed to pull her back towards him. He released her arm and grabbed the bag. He opened it and looked inside: all he saw were two ripe peaches and a purse. He took the purse and let the bag fall to the floor. He glanced at the woman, whose face had grown as white as the hair showing at her roots, and
flicked open the small plastic purse. He recognized the hundred-Euro notes instantly and saw that there were many of them.

One of his men had gone off to tell his colleagues that they had found her, and the other stood in the corridor, trying to explain to the two men that they would be allowed back to their seats as soon as the woman had been removed from the train.

Peppito snapped the purse shut and moved to put it in the pocket of his jacket. The woman, seeing this, reached for it, but Peppito batted her hand away and turned to say something to the men in the corridor. He was standing at the entrance of the compartment, and when she lunged towards him with her entire body, she drove him back into the corridor, where he lost his balance and fell on to one side. That was all it took for the woman to slip past him and run to the open door at the front of the carriage. Peppito called out and struggled to his feet, but by the time he was standing, she was down the steps and racing along the platform beside the train.

Peppito and the policeman closest to him ran to the door and jumped down on to the platform; both drew their pistols. The woman, still running and now clear of the engine, turned and saw the guns in their hands. At the sight of them she screamed aloud and leapt from the platform down on to the tracks. In the distance could be heard, at least by anyone not caught up in the panic and tension of this scene, the arrival
of a through freight train on its way south from Hungary.