The Monster of Florence (22 page)
“Hmph …” Having read on to the end of the next chapter the Marshal got out of bed and into his slippers and dressing gown. “Paraffin tests …” Sergio’s had been positive, despite the grease, but they weren’t a hundred percent reliable. In this case, of course, the husband was bound to be suspect number one, anyway, whether the test was positive or not.
He went into the kitchen and then stopped. What had he got up for? He had no idea. The fridge motor buzzed into life and attracted his attention but there wasn’t much inside to hold it. He wasn’t really hungry, anyway. He was tired and ought to be asleep but some need or other was nagging at him. For want of a better idea he put some water on to boil for camomile tea. While he waited for it he pulled a chair away from the table and sat down, hands planted on his knees, frowning.
Sergio Muscas had confessed and denied, confessed and denied, or rather, the other way round. He’d denied it at first, saying he was ill in bed, as the little boy had told them. Then, when they were doing the paraffin test on him he saw Flavio Vargius, one of his wife’s lovers, being tested, too, and instantly accused him. Nothing was more likely, but Flavio’s test came out negative and after that everything fell apart because they let Sergio go home with the child that night and cook up a series of lies and contradictory versions that would be polluted even more by the rest of the family and never really understood.
“Why did they let that happen?” The Marshal addressed his question to the teabag as he poured boiling water on it. Funny how camomile tea always brought back his childhood. He couldn’t remember being given it very often. Just that smell, maybe, like soaked grass on a muggy wet day.
He thought of that six-year-old child trailing home in the summer dusk with his half-witted father to a silent motherless house, perhaps knowing his father, with or without help, had shot her. Did they both lie awake all night with their separate fears? He thought of one of his own little boys in Nicolino’s place and the thought was more than he could stand. He got to his feet, realizing what it was that he’d needed when he got up, and it certainly wasn’t camomile tea. It was the need to be there, to look into the child’s eyes and know when he was lying, know when he was afraid and when he was just trying to please by saying what people wanted to hear. The Marshal’s way of going about finding the truth had very little to do with what people told him or with written statements taken by someone else. It was to do with people’s expressions, their fidgeting hands, the smell of their sweat. And the house, too—the house, broken down and flood damaged, that Sergio and the boy went back to that night. He needed to see it and smell it, not read about it. With a sigh he ambled back to the bedroom with his drink, trying to get a grip on Sergio’s weird behaviour, despite the difficulty of looking at him through the distorting glass of someone else’s eyes. Why had he suddenly shifted his accusation to Flavio’s brother, Silvano? Silvano was another of his wife’s countless boyfriends.
“Silvano Vargius had a gun and he didn’t like my wife going with other men. I was ill in bed. It was him that did it!”
Nobody had taken much notice of this accusation. Silvano wasn’t known to the police at all and he had an alibi. Who would have given up Sergio, the husband, with no alibi and a positive paraffin test, not to mention a confession, for this unknown quantity? Sergio’s accusation was worthless. How could he know who did it unless he was there himself to see it happen? Seeing that nobody believed him, Sergio, however imbecilic he was supposed to be, understood exactly why.
“All right, I was there, but it was his idea. He said I’d be better off without her. I didn’t want to but he made me. We followed them in Silvano’s car after the cinema. They’d put Nicolino in the back and I watched all the way but his head never showed above the back seat so I knew he was asleep. When we got out of the car he gave me the gun and said there were eight shots.”
That was one of the things that rang true, to the judge then and to the Marshal now. There had been eight shots but the autopsy hadn’t been done yet, so Sergio had no way of knowing unless he’d been there. That and his story of separating the bodies.
“I pulled her off him, holding on to the steering wheel for leverage—that’s why the indicator went on. Then I dragged him back into his seat and the gearstick pulled his shoe off. That was when the kiddie woke up.”
“And the gun?”
“I chucked it in the ditch.”
“We’ve searched the ditch. You didn’t chuck it in the ditch.”
“All right, that bit’s not true. I gave it back to him, but all the rest is true. I gave it back to him and I told him I’d done as he’d said and that I’d spared the kid. When he killed his wife back in Sardinia the kid was spared that time, as well.”
“Killed his wife? What do you mean by that?”
“I’m just saying, that’s all.”
I’d have looked into that, at least, the Marshal thought, sipping the last drops of tea. But would he? He’d have noted it but, after the confrontation, wouldn’t it have seemed a waste of time? Hindsight was all very well but this whole story had collapsed in a matter of hours when Silvano Vargius had been brought face to face with Sergio and his accusations.
“I don’t want to see him.”
“You’ve accused him. You have to see him. Sit down there.”
“I want a glass of water.”
“Later. Sit down.”
And he sat down. The door facing him opened and Silvano Vargius came in with a carabiniere behind him. On the instant, Sergio leapt from his chair and fell on his knees in front of Silvano, sobbing. They tried to pull him to his feet but he clung to Silvano’s legs with tears running down his cheeks, screaming.
“Don’t blame me! Don’t! I didn’t meant it, it was them, they hit me and confused me. Please don’t blame me. It was Flavio, I told them right from the start it was Flavio but they wouldn’t believe me!”
They got him back to his chair in the end, still sobbing, then they looked at Silvano who just stood there as cool as a cucumber and didn’t even comment on the accusation against himself, except to repeat his alibi, that he was playing billiards at a bar where he and Angius, the friend he was playing with, were well known.
“I don’t know about my brother. I couldn’t say where he was.”
Then he was allowed to leave. It was true that nobody could possibly have understood what motive he could have had for helping Sergio to kill his wife, not to mention the even odder business of Sergio’s tearful pleas for forgiveness. The truth was that Sergio went to trial and was convicted without anybody concerned having understood anything, and it was no wonder. Sergio, after that confrontation, had accused just about every one of his wife’s lovers, a list of them as long as your arm, before going back to accusing Flavio and sticking there. He didn’t have much to offer by way of a motive, even for himself.
“I was worn out, I just couldn’t cope any more. And I was sick to death of him screwing my wife in front of my eyes.”
“Hm.” The accomplice was Flavio, then, or so he said, but what Flavio’s motive was supposed to be remained a mystery.
“Some of it’s true, though, that’s what’s wrong.” The Marshal made this illogical remark aloud, as he gave his pillows a thump and tried to find his place among the jumbled sheets of the report. What was wrong was that it ought to be the false bits of the story that didn’t fit but here it was the true bits.
“There’s something or somebody missing. If I could have been there …”
Once he managed to find his place he was pleased, at least, to find that the Marshal who had been there was a man after his own heart and did something he would have done himself.
PART THREE
-1968: NICOLINO-
3.1. ACCOMPANIMENT
The day after the murder, Nicolino returns to the scene of the crime in daylight with the local Marshal and they walk together
from the scene to the Pistoia road and the Rossini house, taking about fifty minutes. On the way, the Marshal points out how difficult the road is, with the boulders they have to climb over. He insists that Nicolino could not have made such a journey without his shoes.
“Listen, Nicolino, you can see as well as me that it’s impossible to walk along here in your socks. Perhaps you came another way.”
“It was this way and I walked it.”
“Now then, Nicolino, I’ll tell you what: either you tell me the truth, or tonight we walk this road again in the dark without any shoes.”
“No! My dad took me! My dad took me and he gave me a donkey ride!”
At this point in their walk, the two of them reach the little bridge where the road deviates to the right and then left again to run straight to the Pistoia road and the Rossini house, fifty yards or so away and in full view. There, the child stops and says that was where his dad left him and turned back, telling him to ring at the white house with the light and tell them his dad was ill in bed.
3.2. CORROBORATION
At this point, Sergio, his father, is questioned again about who accompanied Nicolino. According to his last version it was Flavio, but when he hears what his son has told the Marshal he immediately changes his story to coincide with the child’s, admitting that he himself accompanied the boy. The matter seems clear, but when they take Sergio to the Rossini house and ask him to show them the way he took back after leaving the child, the mystery deepens. In the first place, Sergio talks of the house as a peasant’s grey stone cottage when in fact, unlike the other buildings on the road, it is conspicuously not a cottage, being newish, large and painted white. When they get there it is evening and the floodlight on the front of the house is lit, as it was on the night of the murder, but he doesn’t even seem to recognize that. They set out along the lane across the field opposite but, despite the landmark of the little
bridge, he fails to recognize the deviation and continues along the left fork to come out near the centre of Signa, a good two miles from the murder scene. His mistake is pointed out to him but he remains confused and when they try the journey in reverse he takes three wrong turnings before hitting on the lane where Belinda and Lo Russo turned in that night.
In the car on the return journey to prison he remarks:
“There’s no use in me contradicting the child. Everybody’s going to believe him rather than me just because he’s an innocent kid. But that doesn’t mean he’s telling the truth.”
Asked why he thought the child should be lying, he claims that Flavio threatened to kill the child if he talked. He adds that he was afraid of this himself which was why, for a time, he accused Silvano instead.
3.3. CREDIBILITY
None of the versions of who accompanied Nicolino appears credible: whilst it is understandable that such accomplices as have not been seen and identified by the child would not want to take him away in the car with them, the risk of taking the child all that way and then walking back to the scene of the crime would be enormous for any of them. And are we to believe that whoever stayed behind hung about for two hours beside the newly murdered corpses, waiting to take the child’s escort home? The mystery of who accompanied Nicolino will remain unsolved throughout the investigation, trial and appeal.
3.4. THE UNCLES
After his father’s arrest, Nicolino is placed in an orphanage where carabinieri and magistrates question him further. The first thing to be cleared up was the child’s initial description of the murder which had included the words:
“Uncle Fabio looked in my mum’s bag and then he felt around in the glove compartment and then he went away.”
When he is asked to repeat this at the orphanage “Uncle
Fabio” becomes “Uncle Flavio.” The child calls his mother’s lovers uncle but he really does have an Uncle Fabio. He is Sergio’s brother and Fabio and Tina Muscas, his wife, have looked after Nicolino until his placement in the orphanage. He goes to them at weekends and, though reluctantly, they will eventually adopt him. The child has no one else in the world except his grandfather, Sergio and Fabio’s very aged and infirm father. Was Nicolino’s changing the name a mistake or was he simply confusing the two men? He is asked then to describe Fabio.
“He’s
got curly hair and a moustache and he works in a big place making bread and he’s got a little girl called Dina. She’s my cousin and she’s six.”
“That’s right. We’ve seen her. And does she have a clockwork train like yours?”
“It’s not mine. The lady said I could play with it. I don’t want to stay here. I don’t want to sleep here.”
“You don’t like sleeping here?”
“No. There are noises and I can hear them and when I wake up the bed’s all wet.”
“Perhaps you’ll be able to go and stay with your cousin Dina again and Uncle Fabio and Aunty Tina. Can you remember now who it was who looked in your mum’s handbag?”
“Uncle Flavio.”
“Flavio Vargius?”
“Yes.”
“And what did he look like? Could you see him in the dark?”
“The little light was going on and off.”
“So you saw him? Tell us what he looked like.”
“He had a white shirt and curly hair and a moustache.”
“But Nicolino that’s your Uncle Fabio. Was it Fabio who looked in your mum’s bag?”
“No.”
“Did you not want to tell us about your Uncle Fabio being there?”
“I haven’t to. My aunty said and my dad.”
The child continues to play with the train in silence for some time without being asked anything. His questioners state in their report that they wish to avoid contradicting the instructions of such family as Nicolino has left to him. His mother is dead, his father in prison. Fabio and Tina Muscas are his only hope of a home. Should the police use their authority to try and transfer his trust to them the only result will be that he tells them, not the truth, but whatever he thinks they want to hear. When asked, after a pause, if he likes his uncles—without specifying any name—he says:
“Some
uncles are nice and some are horrible.”
“What sort of uncle is Flavio?”
“A horrible one because once when my dad was in hospital and my mum wasn’t there he hit me hard.”
3.5. SILVANO BEHIND THE REEDS
It is decided to leave the child in peace for a few days, after which he is questioned again about who was present at the scene of the crime. The transcription is direct:
“Who did you see that night?”
“I didn’t see anybody.”
“But remember you told us you saw Flavio?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what Flavio looks like?”
“Yes.”
This time he gives an accurate description of Flavio, adding:
“My dad went in hospital and Flavio came to live at my house.”
“And was he there that night?”
“Every night, he slept in my mum’s bed.”
“But the night you were in the car and somebody fired a gun?”
“My dad was there, and he gave me a donkey ride.”
“And did Flavio go with you and your dad?”
“No. I think there was a man, only I don’t know who he was. But it wasn’t Flavio. No.”
“And can you remember when you said he was? Why did you say that?”
“Because my dad told me to and my aunty.”
“But Flavio wasn’t really there?”
“No. Silvano was standing in the reeds.”
“Silvano? What does Silvano look like?”
His description is vaguer. He knows Silvano less well than Flavio
.
“You didn’t tell us before that you saw Silvano. Why was that?”
“I can’t remember.”
“You can’t remember if you saw him or you can’t remember why you didn’t tell us?”
“I don’t know. There was a noise and he was in the reeds.”
The child at this point becomes fractious and refuses to answer any more questions, saying he is tired. While this seems perfectly comprehensible, it is the first time it has ever happened. He is usually exceptionally co-operative and, if anything, too anxious to please.
At Sergio’s trial, Nicolino says he only saw his dad that night. Sergio Muscas is condemned for murder and for calumny against Flavio and Silvano Vargius.