The Whisperer (23 page)

“What do you mean?”

“Roche wanted to throw me off the case, but then he changed his mind…why?”

Goran hesitated for a moment, but finally decided to tell her.

“We put it to a vote.”

“A vote?” she said, surprised. “So it was a yes.”

“By some margin.”

“But…how?”

“Even Sarah Rosa voted in favor of your staying,” he said, guessing the reason for her reaction.

Mila was thunderstruck. “My worst enemy, of all people!”

“You shouldn’t be too hard on her.”

“I really thought it was the other way around…”

“Rosa’s going through a bad patch: she’s splitting up from her husband.”

Mila wanted to say she had seen them arguing below the Studio the night before, but she kept quiet to avoid seeming too indiscreet.

“That’s a shame.”

“It’s never easy when there are children involved.”

Mila thought this was a reference that went beyond Sarah Rosa, and possibly involved Goran himself.

“Rosa’s daughter has developed an eating disorder in reaction to it all. With the result that her parents still share a roof, but you can imagine the effects of that situation.”

“And that means she can take it out on me?”

“As a new arrival, and the only other female on the team, you’re the easiest target for her. She certainly can’t take it out on Boris or Stern, people she’s known for years…”

Mila poured herself some mineral water, then turned her attention to her other colleagues.

“I’d like to know them well enough to know how to behave with them,” was her excuse.

“Well, it seems to me that with Boris it’s pretty easy: what you see is what you get.”

“Yeah,” agreed Mila.

“I could tell you that he was in the army, where he became an expert in interrogation techniques. I’ve often seen him at work, but he boggles my mind every time. He can get inside people’s heads.”

“I didn’t think he was as clever as that.”

“No, he is. A few years ago they arrested a guy because he was suspected of killing and hiding the corpses of his aunt and uncle, who he was living with. You should have seen him; he was cold, extremely calm. After eighteen hours of serious interrogation in which five officers had taken turns to grill him, he hadn’t admitted a thing. Then Boris arrives, goes into the room, spends twenty minutes with him and he confesses to everything.”

“Goodness! And Stern?”

“Stern is a good man. In fact the expression could have been coined specifically for him. He’s been married for twenty-six years. He has two sons, twins, both in the navy.”

“He seems a bit quiet. I noticed he’s very religious as well.”

“He goes to mass every Sunday, and he also sings in the choir.”

“I can’t believe his suits, they make him look like someone in a seventies cop show!”

Goran laughed and agreed. Then he grew serious again when he added, “His wife, Marie, was on dialysis for five years, waiting for a kidney that didn’t come. Two years ago, Stern donated one of his.”

Surprised and admiring, Mila didn’t know what to say.

Goran went on: “He gave up a good half of the time left to him so that she had at least a hope.”

“He must be very much in love.”

“Yes, I think he is…” said Goran, with a hint of bitterness that she couldn’t help noticing.

At that moment their orders arrived. They ate in silence, the lack of conversation not oppressive in the slightest, like two people who know each other so well that they don’t constantly need to fill the gaps with words to keep from feeling embarrassed.

“I have to tell you one thing,” she continued towards the end. “It happened when I got here, the second evening I set foot in the motel where I was staying before I moved to the Studio.”

“I’m listening…”

“It might have been nothing, or perhaps it was just a feeling, but…I felt as if someone was following me as I crossed the area outside.”

“What do you mean you
felt?
”

“That he was copying my footsteps.”

“Why should anyone have been following you?”

“That’s why I haven’t mentioned it to anyone. It struck me as absurd. It was probably just my imagination…”

Goran registered the information and said nothing.

When coffee came, Mila looked at her watch.

“There’s a place I’d like to go,” she said.

“At this time of night?”

“Yes.”

“OK. Then I’ll ask for the bill.”

Mila offered to split it, but he insisted on his obligation to pay since he was the one who had invited her. With his typical—and almost picturesque—disorder, along with banknotes, coins and business cards, he took some colored balloons out of his pocket.

“They’re my son Tommy’s, he puts them in my pocket.”

“Oh, I didn’t know you were…” she pretended.

“No, I’m not,” he said hastily, lowering his eyes. Then he added, “Not anymore.”

Mila had never been to a funeral at night before. Ronald Dermis’s was the first. It had been decided to hold it then for reasons of public order. For her, the idea that someone could take out their revenge on a coffin was at least as gloomy as the event itself.

The undertakers were at work around the grave. They didn’t have a digger. The ground was icy, and moving it was both difficult and tiring. There were four of them, and they took turns every five minutes, two to dig and two more to light the scene with their torches. Every now and again one of them cursed the damned cold and, to warm themselves up, they passed around a bottle of Wild Turkey.

Goran and Mila watched the scene in silence. The coffin containing Ronald’s remains was still in the van. A little further on was the stone that would be put there at the end: no name, no date, just a serial number. And a small cross.

At that moment, the scene of Ronald’s fall from the tower reappeared in Mila’s head. As he plunged, she had seen no fear, no alarm on his face. It was as if he was undaunted by death. Perhaps, like Alexander Bermann, he preferred that solution. Yielding to the desire to erase himself forever.

“Everything all right?” Goran asked her, penetrating her silence.

Mila turned towards him. “Everything’s fine.”

At that moment she thought she noticed someone behind a tree in the cemetery. She took a better look and recognized Feldher. Apparently Ronald’s secret funeral wasn’t as secret as all that.

The laborer was wearing a checked woolen jacket and holding a can of beer, as though raising a toast to his old childhood friend, even though he probably hadn’t seen him for years. Mila thought this might be a positive thing: even in a place where evil is buried, there can still be room for pity.

If it hadn’t been for Feldher, for his involuntary help, they wouldn’t have been there. And it was thanks to him that she had stopped that serial killer in the making—as Goran had called him.

When she caught his eye he crushed the tin and headed towards his pickup, parked not far away. He would return to the solitude of his house on the dump, to cold tea in mismatching glasses, to the rust-colored dog, to wait for that same anonymous death to turn up at his door one day.

Mila’s decision to attend Ronald’s hurried funeral was probably linked to something Goran had said in the hospital: “If you hadn’t stopped him, Ronald would have killed you as he did Billy Moore many years ago.”

And who knows, perhaps he would have gone on killing after her.

“People don’t know, but according to our statistics, between six and eight serial killers are currently active in this country. But no one has identified them yet,” said Goran as the gravediggers lowered the wooden box into the hole.

Mila was shocked. “How is that possible?”

“Because they strike at random, without a pattern. Or because no one has managed to link murders that look very different to one another. Or perhaps because the victims aren’t worthy of a large-scale investigation…maybe, for example, a prostitute is found in a ditch. In most cases it’s drugs, or her pimp, or a customer. Bearing in mind the risks of the profession, ten murdered prostitutes are considered an acceptable average, and they don’t end up on a serial killer case list. It’s hard to accept, I know, but sadly that’s how it is.”

A gust of wind threw up little whirlwinds of snow and dust. Mila shivered and huddled even deeper into her parka.

“What’s the point of it all?” she asked. But the question had nothing to do with the case they were dealing with, or with her chosen profession. It was a prayer, a way to surrender to her inability to understand certain dynamics of evil, and also a sad request for salvation. And she certainly didn’t expect a reply.

But Goran spoke. “God is silent. The devil whispers…”

Neither of them said anything more.

The gravediggers were beginning to fill in the hole with icy earth. The graveyard rang with the sound of spades. Then Goran’s mobile phone rang. He hadn’t had time to take it from his coat pocket when Mila’s phone rang as well.

They didn’t have to answer to know that the third girl had been found.

T
he Kobashi family—father, mother and two children, a boy of fifteen and a girl of twelve—lived in the prestigious complex of Capo Alto. Sixty hectares plunged in greenery, with a swimming pool, a riding school, a golf course and a clubhouse reserved for the owners of the forty villas of which it was composed. A refuge of the haute bourgeoisie, made up for the most part of specialist doctors, architects and lawyers.

A two-meter wall, cleverly masked by a hedge, separated this paradise of the elite from the rest of the world. The place was guarded twenty-four hours a day. The electronic eyes of seventy CCTV cameras that kept the whole perimeter under surveillance and a private police force guaranteed the safety of the residents.

Kobashi was a dentist. A high salary, a Maserati in the drive and a Mercedes in the garage, a second home in the mountains, a yacht and an enviable collection of wines in the cellar. His wife brought up the children and furnished the house with unique and wildly expensive objects.

“They were in the tropics for three weeks, they came back last night,” Stern announced as Goran and Mila reached the villa. “The reason for the trip was the business of the kidnapped girls. The daughter is more or less the same age, so they thought it was a good idea to send the servants on holiday and get a change of air.”

“Where are they now?”

“In a hotel. We’ve put them there for their safety. The wife needed a few Valiums. Not to put too fine a point on it, they’re devastated.”

Stern’s last words helped to prepare them for what they were about to see.

The house was no longer a house. Now it was definitely a “crime scene.” It had been entirely enclosed by a tape to keep away the neighbors who were crowding around to see what had happened.

“At least the press won’t be able to get in,” Goran remarked.

They walked along the lawn that separated the villa from the street. The garden was well tended and splendid winter plants decorated the beds where Mrs. Kobashi would grow her prize roses in summer.

An officer had been placed at the door to let in only authorized personnel. Both Krepp and Chang were at work with their respective teams. Shortly before Goran and Mila prepared to cross the threshold, Chief Inspector Roche came out.

“You can’t imagine…” he said in a deathly voice, holding a handkerchief over his mouth. “This business is taking an increasingly horrible turn. I wish we had been able to prevent this slaughter…they’re only children, for God’s sake!”

Roche’s fury sounded genuine.

“As if that weren’t enough, the residents have already complained about our presence, and they’re pressuring their political acquaintances to have us sent away as soon as possible! Can you imagine? Now I have to call some fucking senator to reassure him that we’ll be quick!”

Mila looked around the little crowd of residents assembled in front of the villa. It was in their private Eden, and they saw them as invaders.

But in their corner of paradise, an unexpected gateway to hell had opened up.

Stern passed Mila the jar of camphor paste to put under her nostrils. She completed the ritual of being introduced to death by putting on plastic shoe covers and latex gloves. The officer at the door stepped aside to let them pass.

The holiday suitcases and the bags of souvenirs were still by the door. The flight that had brought the Kobashis back from the tropical sun to that February chill had landed at about ten o’clock at night. Then home as quickly as possible, to get back to the old habits and comfort of the place that would never be the same for them. The servants would only return from leave the following day, so they were the first to step across the threshold.

The stench fouled the air.

“This is what the Kobashis smelt as soon as they opened the door,” Goran said immediately.

“For a moment or two they must have wondered what it was,” said Mila. “Then they turned the light on…”

In the big sitting room, the scientific technicians and the pathology staff coordinated their gestures as they moved, as if guided by a mysterious and invisible choreographer. The precious marble floor pitilessly reflected the light from the halogen lamps. Modern furniture alternated with antiques. Three dust-colored sofas bounded three sides of a square in front of a huge pink stone fireplace.

On the middle sofa sat the body of the little girl.

Her eyes were open—
veined blue.
And she was looking at them.

The fixed stare was the last sign of humanity in that ravaged face. The processes of decomposition were already at an advanced stage. The lack of the left arm gave her a slanted posture. As if she was going to slip to one side at any moment. Instead she remained seated.

She was wearing a blue floral dress. The stitching and cut suggested that it was homemade, and that it had probably been made to measure. Mila also noticed the crocheting of her white socks, the satin belt fastened at the waist with a mother-of-pearl button.

She was dressed like a doll.
A broken doll.

Mila couldn’t look at her for more than a few seconds. She looked down and noticed for the first time the silk rug between the sofas. It showed Persian roses and multicolored waves. She had the impression that the figures were moving. Then she looked more closely.

The rug was completely covered with little insects that swarmed and clambered over each other.

Mila instinctively brought a hand to the wound in her arm, and squeezed it. Anyone watching her would have thought that it hurt. In fact it was the opposite.

As usual, she was seeking comfort in pain.

It didn’t last long, but it gave her the strength to be a careful witness to that obscene display. When she had had enough of the spasm, she stopped squeezing. She heard Dr. Chang saying to Goran: “They’re larvae of
Sarcophaga carnaria
. Their biological cycle is quite quick and they’re in the warm. And they’re very greedy.”

Mila knew what the doctor was referring to, because her missing-person cases were often solved with the finding of a corpse. Often it was necessary to proceed not only to the pitiful rite of recognition, but also to the more prosaic one of dating the remains. Different insects participate in the different phases that follow death, especially when the remains are exposed. The
Sarcophaga carnaria
was a viviparous fly, and had to be part of the second group, because Mila heard the pathologist saying that the corpse must have been there for at least a week.

“Albert had a lot of time to act, while the owners were away.”

“But there’s something I really don’t understand…” Chang added. “How did the bastard manage to get the body here with seventy surveillance cameras and thirty private guards checking the area twenty-four hours a day?”