DIARY OF A PSYCHOPATH

Stefano Vignaroli

Italian Edition ©2022 Altromondo Editore

Editoriale series: Underworld

English Editon ©2023 Tektime

Translation by Simona Casaccia

All rights of reproduction and translation are reserved

This book is a work of fiction; references to actual people, places or events are to be considered purely coincidental and unintentional. Ideas and concepts expressed in this volume constitute the author’s personal opinion and are not necessarily those of the publisher and contributors.

Stefano Vignaroli

DIARY OF A PSYCHOPATH

Challenge in the Dark for Commissioner Caterina Ruggeri

Table of Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

EPILOGUE

To my wife Paola

and to my children Diego and Debora

There are a hundred ways to die,

a hundred ways to die,

a hundred ways, a hundred ways, a hundred ways to die.

There are a hundred ways to die,

a hundred ways to die,

a hundred ways, a hundred ways, a hundred ways to die.

The first way to die is when you iron

your clothes and clothespins get tangled in the threads

maybe you reach out to grab a sweater

the clothesline comes off and you fall off the balcony

that’s why I don’t iron, sometimes I don’t even wash

if there’s water and electricity electrocuting me from the cable

You risk death from the day you are born

That’s why every moment you leave is decisive

the risks are around especially in the city,

I run you over at the streetcar stop

today it’s hot, I take a shower I cool off

then I slip on the marble I fall and hit my head

I had a party with fireworks

I lost control, the building exploded

and the one next door too, you see the dead in the yard

you were passing with the booster and exploded from the seat.

Traslation from Italian Fabri Fibra (Italian rapper)

INTRODUCTION

I’ve always been partial to psychological thrillers. Getting inside the killer’s mind, explore its darkest recesses and understanding what drove a seemingly normal person to carry out brutal murders is something that fascinates and excites me.

And this is precisely the central theme of Vignaroli’s new novel: what happens when the person who commits some atrocity is an individual most of us would call decent? We are so used to thinking of murderers as borderline personalities, with a violent and traumatic past, that the opposite seems almost unacceptable.

Instead, the worst characteristic of evil is that it meanders everywhere. How would you act if, for example, the possibility existed that a murderer was part of your family?

That’s what happens to Commissioner Caterina Ruggeri, the novel’s protagonist, when she finds herself investigating the deaths of two charred women inside a burning car. This, combined with a creepy diary, the journal of a psychopath, found next to the car, makes the book both exciting and dark.

But Stefano Vignaroli’s novels also possess another extraordinary characteristic: reading them one has the impression of moving through the alleys of the small towns of Marche described by the author.

I feel like saying that The Diary of a Psychopath is one of those detective stories that leaves a strange taste in your mouth, makes you think and teaches. Because, after reading this book, you will understand that a criminal mind can grow even among decent people and that the most unmentionable perversions can arise without apparent trauma. The human mind is a dark and unexplored burrow, and Stefano Vignaroli’s thriller is proof of that.

Filippo Munaro

PROLOGUE

Before entering the house, Eleanora, cigarette lit in her mouth, took the mail from the mailbox. It was the early afternoon of December 21, 2012, the air was clear, a cold mistral wind had blown away all the clouds, and the sun was shining, although despite all its willpower, it could not warm the atmosphere as it would have liked. Had someone said or written that the world was supposed to end on that day? Mah, Eleanora did not seem to sense strange warnings of earthquakes or floods or other impending natural disasters in the environment. Rather, her heart had sunk into total darkness for the past few days, since her partner Cecilia had confessed to her that she had fallen in love with a man and wanted nothing more to do with her. Why? They were so good together, they could give free rein to all their sexual instincts and fully enjoy the pleasure each made the other feel. Cecilia would never be as happy with a man as she could be happy with her. She absolutely had to make another attempt to bring her sweet companion closer to her. She went inside, laid the grocery bags on the floor, hastily grabbed at the supermarket where she worked as a cashier, and placed the mail on the table. She finally managed to take a drag from the cigarette and put it out in the ashtray, just in time to keep a couple of inches of burnt tobacco from falling onto the polished floor. Among all the letters, her eye was drawn to an envelope of the padded kind, the kind used to send CDs or small books, to prevent the contents from spoiling before delivery. There was no sender. With a pounding heart she opened the envelope, hoping for a message from Cecilia. Inside was just a square card with a strange design. Circles and arcs of circles intertwined and crossed with each other to simulate a strange optical effect of a three-dimensional figure. Eleonora`s eyes fixated on the image, which apparently began to rotate, more and more swirling, like a whirlwind that wanted to draw everything toward its center. She lost track of reality and began to see a few letters leaking out of the center of the figure, heading toward her mind and fixing themselves in a remote corner of her brain like nails hammered into the wall. The set of letters, at one point, formed a phrase: KILL AND KILL YOURSELF. YOUR WEAPON IS FIRE. The image slowly stopped spinning and Eleanora regained consciousness of herself and her surroundings, but not of her actions, which were now commanded by that phase imprinted in her subconscious self. She grabbed her cell phone and called Cecilia.

«I need to talk to you. Don’t worry, it will be the last time, then you will be free to leave with your man. In two hours, in front of the sports facilities, I’ll be waiting for you inside my car.»

She ended the call without giving her time to reply; she knew her friend would show up for the appointment. She prepared herself carefully, choosing elegant clothing and showering herself with deodorant. She paid attention to the styling of her hair and sprayed plenty of hairspray to maintain the style. She arranged her earrings and piercings and finally devoted time to makeup: foundation, mascara, lipstick. Finally she looked at herself in the mirror, judging the result more than satisfactory. She could not help but, looking at her reflection, bring a hand down to her lower abdomen, graze her mound and feel a little shiver. From that moment on she knew exactly what she would have to do. Before reaching the rendezvous place she passed by the tobacco shop and bought a pack of cigarettes and a few cans of lighter gas. Death would come soon after the last intense act of pleasure.

CHAPTER 1

I was explaining to my colleague from Senigallia, Chief Commissioner Sergio Adinolfi, the function of my team in the regional area and the possibilities for collaboration and interchange with local Police Districts in investigations concerning heinous crimes, which were also increasingly taking place in our area.The guy, a man in his forties, tall, athletic, with an intelligent look, two blue eyes that seemed to lay you bare through the lenses of his glasses, listened to me attentively.

«My dear, probably as of 2014 all law enforcement agencies,us, carabinieri and financial police, will be combined into a single force, with a view to significant savings for the public coffers. Many of our small Districts, as well as small Carabinieri or Finance barracks, will be closed, and strong cores will be created in the territory, with mixed personnel from the old staffs. We do not yet know how this reform will be implemented, what the timing will be and what we will be called, but one fact is certain: we must come to the appointment strong and determined, we must not let others overrule us. And the Homicide and Missing Persons Section that I head is one of our strengths. I am keen to demonstrate this to ensure its survival, and for this I need the support of all of you who work in the small police stations, who are in touch with daily reality.»

My colleague was about to retort something, when our attention was drawn to an unusual commotion down the street, a short distance from the building we were in at the time, located in a suburban neighborhood of Senigallia, across the street from sports facilities, actually a quiet area with few people at that time of year. It was in fact late December, the days had grown much shorter, to the point that it was four o’clock in the afternoon and the sun was now setting on the horizon.

A parked car was on fire, already a column of black smoke was beginning to rise. There and then I thought it was nothing serious, apart from the financial damage the owner would suffer from the loss of his car, but some details of the scene made us realize that a tragedy was unfolding. The car was not empty; there were people on board. Without even slipping on our coats, we rushed downstairs. Sergio grabbed the first fire extinguisher that came into his hands, I did the same and shouted to the policeman on duty, passing by his guardhouse, to call ambulance and fire department.

As we arrived near the burning car, a Peugeot 207, we could check the efficiency of the fire extinguishers in our possession. Mine was completely empty, while the one Commissioner Adinolfi had in his hand managed to smother the flames just enough to see that for the person sitting on the driver’s side there was little we could do. Then, exhaling the last spray of foam, the flames finished their work, reducing the car to a blackened skeleton. Fortunately, so to speak, the vehicle must have been diesel-powered, so there was no explosion.

Firefighters arrived with sirens blaring and within a split second extinguished the last tongues of fire. A little further on, 118¹ personnel were rendering aid to an individual, who was still holding a metal hose and had been slightly burned in the face. On the ground, unconscious, was a person, whom I understood to be a woman. In all likelihood she had exited the passenger side of the car, crawled a few meters enveloped in flames, then slumped helplessly. I called myself stupid, if I hadn’t wasted time with the fire extinguisher I might have noticed her, thrown something at her to smother the flames, to prevent her from atrocious suffering. But in the confusion I had not even paid attention to her screams. The paramedics gently turned her over, one of them placed two fingers on her neck and said to the other, «She’s still alive! Come on, let’s get it going.»

The second paramedic shook his head. «There is nothing we can do, she’s in a terrible state. If she is saved she will be disfigured forever. Let’s give her oxygen and call the helicopter, they will transport her to the major burn center.»

The scene was gruesome, my stomach was cramping and I was about to vomit, but I took courage, approached my colleague, who was still staring in astonishment at the charred body of the person left inside the car, and tried to shake him back to reality.

«Come on, Sergio, there was nothing more we could do. Let’s rather try to understand what happened. We need to interview the individual with that bar in his hand before they take him to the emergency room. Let’s hear what he has to say. While you get his personal details, I’ll call Cimino. Some forensic relief will certainly be helpful to us.»

As I was making the call, I was pleased to notice that two District officers had come down the street and were handing Sergio and me our respective coats.It was actually a relief to put on the coats, as I was beginning to get quite cold.

«I was just passing by chance when I noticed something strange inside that car.The windows were getting black with smoke inside.There were flames, but they were not high, not coming out of the passenger compartment, and I could hear the desperate cries of a woman. I tried to open the door, the handle was hot, but I insisted anyway. The door would not open because it was locked from the inside. So I found this metal bar and smashed the glass. I had never done that, I only succeeded in making the situation worse by supplying oxygen to the fire, a violent blaze hit me throwing me backwards. I managed to see that woman engulfed in flames climb out of the window and run a few meters, leaving behind a trail of fragments of clothing and poor shreds of flesh blackened by the fire, and then collapse to the ground, wriggling free. The other person remained motionless in the driver’s seat. I couldn’t tell if was already dead or if was standing still on purpose because wanted to die in that horrible way.»

The paramedics gave us a stern look and got Mr. Giovanni Bartoli, that’s what the guy had said his name was, into the ambulance.

«You will have time and a way to question him. He urgently needs to be medicated now.»

The ambulance set off with sirens blaring, while from the now darkening sky came the sound of the helicopter’s rotor, which shortly landed in the center of the nearby soccer field. With more calm, the mortuary police and the forensic van would arrive. In the meantime, we also collected the testimony of the fire marshal.

«The car was locked from the inside, probably the person at the wheel had operated the central locking button. I didn’t touch anything, but inside the passenger compartment I noticed, among the charred remains, at least four canisters of butane gas, the kind used to refill lighters to be clear. The victim, who I believe is also a woman, is still holding a lighter. The cause of the tragedy was herself. Perhaps the two of them had decided to commit suicide, shut everything down, and caused the passenger compartment to become saturated with gas, thus also causing themselves some degree of lightheadedness. A spark with a lighter was more than enough to ignite the fire.»

«Bad way to kill yourself», I retorted. «And anyway, one of them didn’t seem very agreeable to ending up roasted. Let the forensic team make their findings, Sergio, the next few days we will have a chance to better understand the dynamics of the events and the motivations that led these women to such an absurd gesture. In the meantime, based on the license plate of the vehicle, we are trying to name that body and the person who was supposed to die with her. By now this is a case in which I am involved, so we will conduct the investigation together. I’m going back to base now, but we’ll keep in touch.»

«You can count on it!» replied Adinolfi, taking his leave.

In the following days I could appreciate the professional qualities of the man I had just met, who had immediately impressed me in a positive way. If i had him instead of Santinelli at my side, as my deputy, our team would certainly have had an extra edge.

We met again in his office in Senigallia a couple of days later.

«The car, a Peugeot 207, belonged to a certain Eleonora Giulianelli, 36. She was a saleswoman in a shopping center and lived alone in an apartment building a few steps away», Sergio began. «We know her from stopping her a few times and finding her in possession of some small amounts of drugs, little stuff, for personal use, so she has never been arrested and her criminal record is clean. We do know, however, that she frequented rapper circles. She often attended rave parties, looking for a high at all costs. Her mother, at the recognition of the body, was yes desperate, but she said that she expected that sooner or later Eleonora would end badly. And so it was. We questioned those who knew her, who said that the woman was a lesbian, had been going steady for some time now with a friend of hers, Cecilia Bertini, 37, who is then the other woman who was in the car with her. The latter, however, had recently met a man and fallen in love with him, and was therefore trying to break off the relationship with Eleonora. Putting these elements together, I think we could draw some conclusions that are very true to reality.»

«Let me tell you. Eleonora has an unhealthy relationship with her partner, and she really doesn’t like that she is leaving her for a man. She wants to make one last attempt, inviting her friend in the car to talk, to convince her to stay together with her. But, if he can’t convince her, she has everything prepared: they will die together. They have snorted butane before, to get a cheap high, so Cecilia does not care about those four cans of lighter gas. The fact is that Eleonora has sabotaged the canisters so that they slowly release the gas into the passenger compartment. Cecilia listens to her friend for a while, a bit stunned by the smell of gas maybe even allowing herself to be caressed and kissed, but then she resists, she doesn’t want to give up on her project, she is almost forty, it’s time to get her head on straight and devote herself to a proper relationship, with a man, maybe get married, who knows! Eleonora, meanwhile, has sealed the windows and locked the doors with the central locking button, which is located in the panel on her side, next to the windows. Another command allows those to be blocked as well. She casually pulls out the cigarette packet, offers one to her friend, brings one to her mouth herself, and takes the lighter. To make sure the fire ignites, Eleonora also pours a lot of perfume on herself, sprays a lot of hairspray on her hair, and wears clothing made of synthetic fibers, which are easily ignited. All it takes is the spark from the lighter and the passenger compartment turns into an hell. Eleonora remains still; death at this point is a release for her, even though she chose an atrocious way to die. Certainly not of the same opinion is Cecilia, who tries to escape the flames, tries to open the door but it is blocked, to lower the window but that is also blocked, she cries out in despair, tries to reach with her hand for the central locking button, perhaps she succeeds but by now, due to the heat, it no longer works, because the car’s electrical system is gone. She coughs, tears, despairs, flames begin to consume her clothes, causing excruciating pangs as they come in contact with her skin. When she now thinks it is over, she feels the crystal shatter, a shower of glass shards pouring down on her. Someone is helping her but, in a flash, the flames increase their vigor, gaining new strength from the oxygen that has arrived so generously to fuel them. She finds a way to throw herself out of the cockpit, through the broken window, but by now she is a human flashlight, manages to take a few steps and falls to the ground. The rest we saw with our own eyes.»

«And so we can dismiss the episode as a case of murder-suicide. Regardless of whether Bertini got away with it or not, her executioner is dead, so the matter is closed.»

«It would be so if it were not for one detail, some artifacts that the forensic team found a few steps away from the scene: a small book with a purple leather cover, finely wrought, a partly consumed candle and a photo of Cecilia Bertini torn into four pieces. Cimino reported to me that the little book, so at first glance, might have looked like a copy of a Bible, or a Gospel, but the pages were almost all blank except for a few at the beginning that were handwritten. On the frontpage a title, written in block letters, “THE DIARY OF A PSYCHOPATH”, on the following pages a disquisition from a real psychopath, which I will have a chance to read when Forensics finishes its work on the find and hands it over to me, and also a quote from the Gospel of Matthew: “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who made a wedding feast for his son. He sent his servants to call the wedding guests, but they did not want to come. Again he sent other servants to say, Behold, I have prepared my meal; my oxen and my fattened animals are already slaughtered and everything is ready; come to the wedding. But they did not care and went some to their own camps, some to their own affairs; others then took his servants, insulted them and killed them. Then the king was indignant and, sending his troops, killed those murderers and set their city on fire. Then he said to his servants, The wedding feast is ready, but the guests were not worthy of it; go now to the crossroads of the streets, and as many as you find, call them to the wedding. Going out into the streets, those servants gathered as many as they could find, good and bad, and the hall was filled with diners. The king went in to see the diners, and when he caught sight of one who was not wearing a wedding garment, he said to him, Friend, how could you come in here without a wedding garment? And he fell silent. Then the king commanded the servants, Bind his hands and feet and cast him out into the darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few chosen”.»

«So creepy. The guy refers to flames, he refers to hell, but what meaning can this have? Maybe it is Eleanora herself who prepared these things, after all, she was at a breaking point with Cecilia and planned to kill her. Everything is there: the ripped photo, the reference to the fire, the consumed candle, the carefully chosen Gospel passage.»

«Something doesn’t add up. In the book everything is written like it was a man not a woman. And then what makes me think that she was not the one who wrote that booklet is her cultural level. Eleonora worked as a clerk in a supermarket, was addicted to drugs, and frequented rapper circles. We will have to read carefully what is written in that diary, but it jumps out that it is the product of a fine, educated mind. What I fear is that we may be dealing with a madman, a manipulator, who made Eleonora his strong arm to kill his victim, perhaps remaining a short distance from the scene to observe the holocaust and scatter unnoticed on the ground the elements we found, which represent a challenge from him to us. He may be a serial killer: Catch me if you can, he is telling us, otherwise I will strike again.»

«Oh,my gosh, Caterina, this is just your conjecture. This is all to prove. But what worries me is that you spoke in the plural: we will have to read carefully. What does that mean?»

«Oh, yes, I forgot! The Quaestor’s² letter, here. From tomorrow you will be on duty in my office, you will be my deputy in place of Santinelli, who will currently be taking over the regency of the Senigallia Police District. We have a hot case on our hands, and Dr. Spanò thinks that you, at this time, are more useful in Homicide than you are in this peripheral district. You’ll see, you’ll fit right in with the team!»

«But...» he tried to object. I didn’t give him time, because I turned on my heels and gained the office door.

«See you in the morning. Eight o’clock, I care about punctuality!»

CHAPTER 2

The human psyche is sometimes capable of setting in motion unexpected mechanisms, turning an apparently normal individual into a heinous criminal. The triggers are not always known; they must be sought in the near and distant past, in the individual’s psyche, in unusual events that can happen to anyone and that in some individuals trigger abnormal reactions. Criminology and criminal psychology are sciences, albeit not exact and albeit constantly evolving, that help the investigator to discover those individuals in whom, because of their psychic characteristics, little is needed to overcome that thin thread that divides rationality and normality from the enactment of behaviors detrimental to themselves and especially to others. Of course, we are not talking about common criminals: it is easy for any policeman to arrest a thief, a drug dealer or a fence in those pockets of society where people live on the edge of legality, in the slums of big cities, or in suburban nightclubs, or in suburban ghettos inhabited mostly by families of low social status. We want to talk here about those individuals of fine intelligence, who lead their daily lives as ordinary people, quiet workers, perhaps professionals, sometimes fathers of families, in whom every once in a while something snaps, a spring, an irrepressible desire, which leads them to commit crimes against people sometimes even strangers, most often belonging to the opposite sex to their own, turning them into serial killers. Having consummated the crime, there is a phase of appeasement in which the subject returns to his normal life, also pondering how wrong-headed what he has done may be. But he has managed to hide the misdeed well, no one suspects him, he has done it right under the nose of even the police, who may have questioned him and he has managed to deflect himself egregiously in answering questions. It almost seems to him that what happened was performed by another person, in a splitting of individuality that is the basis of his schizophrenia. But he has kept something aside in memory, a photograph, a film, a part of the victim’s body, perhaps just a lock of hair, or an object or garment that belonged to them. And by looking at or touching that fetish he becomes aroused, until, when the quiescent phase is over, he again has the urge to act, to kill, even though his rational self realizes that this is bad. And this in a vicious circle, which always starts over and reaps victims, until a skillful detective manages to unmask and catch him. And it is his unconscious desire to be caught, so much so that he himself leaves ever more frequent and ever more enigmatic clues, issuing challenges to the one chasing him, as if to say: I need to be stopped, but I am very clever, it cannot be so easy to get to me. Such characters have filled history, distant and recent: Dracula, Jack the Ripper, Gianfranco Stevanin, the Monster of Florence, Hannibal Lecter, just to name a few.

But beyond what we have described above, there are individuals, in themselves not dangerous, who in order to satisfy their instincts or repressed sexuality enact behaviors deviant from the norm in order to give vent in some way to their pleasure. These may be behaviors that simulate the enactment of violent practices on themselves or their compliant partner, in sadomasochistic practices or, more simply, one may be attracted to fetish. There are those who are aroused by seeing a woman wearing stiletto heeled shoes, or hold-up nylons, and so on. Usually it is the male individual who is the fetish enthusiast; it is very rare for a woman to have the same passions, except to indulge a partner who, if not stimulated by imaginative elements, would most likely go blank.

After all, most of the time there is nothing wrong with performing erotic games in front of one’s partner. Sometimes, even, such mechanisms are not shared with the person with whom one is having sex, but remain exclusive legacies of the mind of those who, for example, come to orgasm imagining inside their heads that they are strangling their woman. Not that he would actually do it, but if that violent fantasy did not develop in the mind, the subject would not even reach ejaculation. Where do these perversions originate? And how potentially dangerous can an individual suddenly become who harbors such thoughts, such fantasies, perhaps never confessed and never shared with anyone?

Let’s give a couple of examples.

Artemio, a purely fictitious name that we do not want to associate with any known person on the face of the Earth, is a fifty-year-old architect, not wealthy but well off, has a modest house of his own, a wife who loves and respects him, although intimate relationships have been less and less frequent for some time, two children now in their twenties. A very ordinary person, but let us go back in time in this man’s life to the age of eleven. It is the beginning of the 1970s and Artemio is an outspoken and intelligent child, he is good in school, attends sixth grade and sits at the first desk, right in front of the teacher’s desk. The literature professor is in her thirties and not a beautiful woman, but she has two beautiful legs and shows them off by always wearing skirts or short dresses, which, after all, are in fashion at that time. Artemio is at the stage where his puberty is about to explode, and from his position at the first desk in the middle row, right in front of the teacher’s desk, he has a nice view of the professor’s legs, who seems to be an artist in crossing them over and twisting them together almost to the point of knotting them. Those legs look like two snakes because of the way they manage to wrap themselves around each other, then every so often the crossed leg goes down and the other goes up, and with each of these movements the skirt moves higher and higher, to leave wider and wider stretches of thigh uncovered. Until day X, Artemio remained indifferent to those movements, but on day Y an unexpected fact happens, and on yet another overcrowd the professor’s panties are also revealed, in front of which the seam of the pantyhose bodice that the woman is wearing is evident, veiling her beautiful legs. Artemio dwells on that seam and on the color of her legs, a London smoke color obtained thanks to the presence of that sheer garment.

He thinks, “Those great legs aren’t naked. Even my mother wears pantyhose in the morning when she gets dressed...”

And as he processes these thoughts, an unexpected rush of testosterone causes him to have an erection. But his fantasy goes on and makes him imagine slowly slipping off her pantyhose and then....

A normal person would think, “And then, yes, there’s copulation, you make love with her.”

But no one has yet explained to Artemio what happens between a man and a woman who love each other. His mind processes another thought, “Now that I have her pantyhose in my hand, what do I do with it? But yes, I pass it around her neck and begin to pull the ends of the garment tighter and tighter until I begin to choke the professor. I’m not mad at her, she hasn’t done anything wrong to me, she even gives me good grades, I’m almost in love with her, but it turns me on to imagine her in pain. She starts screaming, begging me to stop, until the screaming fades and her body loses vitality, her face turns pale from purple and...” Here is the pollution inside his pants. And this was the first act of autoeroticism experienced by the child, entirely mental, achieved without even touching his member with his hand.

At home he will return to that thought and repeatedly touch himself, in a series of masturbations, one after another until he is exhausted, always continuing to imagine the same scene, of strangling the professor with his own pantyhose. This deviation he will carry with him for life, never confessing to his partner on duty that during the sexual act he achieves pleasure by thinking in his mind that he is choking her with a nylon stocking. And now that, having reached and passed the age of fifty, his wife seldom satisfies him in bed and increasingly goes looking for sex for money, he has found a prostitute to whom he gives something more than the agreed price if she has her stockings pulled off and wrapped around her neck, pretending to be strangled. Will it remain just a game, a pure expedient to achieve pleasure, or will he one day really pull on that pantyhose to the point of killing the unfortunate prostitute who had so far trusted him, leaving her lifeless on the floor? A very remote possibility, though not impossible. Artemio is a well-balanced man, he knows that murder is not his thing, that killing is too far from his way of being and acting, and he will surely be satisfied with just the game.

Quite different is the case of Gualberto. Here, too, we use a fictitious name so that he cannot be associated with any known person. It is the early 1960s, Gualberto is five years old, a preschooler, very intelligent for his age, though a bit shy. He is an only child and lives in a family in which there is a lot of tension between his parents, often witnessing quarrels and scenes of jealousy on the part of his mother toward his father, especially when the latter, for work reasons - he asserts - comes home late at night. The child does not understand the meaning of those quarrels. He is very attracted to the television, a new device that has recently made its way into the house. One program in particular attracts him, Non è mai troppo tardi (It’s never too late) by Alberto Manzi, a program dedicated to teaching illiterate people to read and write, of which there are still many in Italy. A child endowed with his own intelligence, like nothing else, following that transmission learns to read at a preschool age, without the parents even imagining it at all. So when his mother sees him leafing through magazines she herself buys, she thinks the child is just looking at the pictures and is unable to read. But when he is left alone, Gualberto, hyphenating under his breath and holding the sign with his little index finger, reads what is written in the comic strips of some strips that he particularly likes and that tell the stories of a character, called Atomino, in one of Mom’s magazines, Noi donne (We Women). At that age, a strange but natural thing happens in some children. It is common that, by touching himself, the child discovers his own genitals, and discovers that his willy is capable of turgor causing him pleasure the nature of which he does not understand. This is not true masturbation; the genital apparatus is still immature and ejaculation may not occur, but the boy is sometimes gratified by this pleasure and tends to touch himself frequently.

Having passed this stage of growth, the child moves on to other interests and forgets about this small pleasure, until he reaches the age of twelve, thirteen, when, having reached puberty, he will engage in real masturbatory activity, in the normal discovery of his own sexuality. After that, sooner or later, he will find a girl who, by offering him her body, will move him from the lonely stage to the stage of discovering love.

Let’s take a step back and return to Gualberto at the age of five who is reading Atomino’s comic strip. In this strip, Atomino’s girlfriend, Smeraldina, has been kidnapped by Indians and tied to a pole. Under her feet, the Indians have placed bundles of wood, because they plan to burn her alive if the town sheriff - Atomino himself - will not meet their demands. Smeraldina cries out, “HELPPPP! ATOMINOOO!” as one of the Indians brings the lighted flashlight closer to her feet. Simultaneously with the reading, Gualberto’s hand slips inside his shorts to search for his small penis and make it turgid in that little game that gives him a pleasant sensation. In a completely unconscious way, at this precise moment, sexual pleasure is associated with the vision of fire. And there would be nothing wrong with that; after all, we all associate fire, heat, the color red, with love, passion, desire. But for Gualberto it is different, he associates pleasure with the fire that is about to consume a victim, a woman who is about to be burned alive, although in the strip then Atomino will arrive to save his girlfriend from the flames.

Over the next few days, several times the child will pick up the magazine again, focusing on that particular cartoon, covering with his little hands the subsequent figures in which Smeraldina is rescued by Atomino, and touching himself feeling pleasure at the thought of a woman being killed by fire.

He will even go so far as to hide the newspaper, fearing that sooner or later his mother will undoubtedly throw it in the trash.

Time passes and this thing, like so many other games, falls into oblivion. Gualberto begins to attend school, he is good, intelligent, has excellent grades in Italian and Arithmetic, attends the third grade and already has a passion for reading fiction books. But in the family quarrels between his parents are becoming more and more frequent, his father is cheating on his mother and she knows it very well, but the little boy does not understand this. It happens that one evening Mom has long since set the table for dinner, but Dad is delaying in an exaggerated manner this time, it is twenty-two o’clock, and he still has not returned. Mom, in a fit of rage, starts grabbing the dishes, plates and glasses, throwing them on the floor or against the walls, where they shatter. Finished with what’s on top of the set table, she turns to emptying the cupboard, sending everything she can to shards. The floor is a battlefield. The last still-healthy plate is hurled toward the door just as the father makes his entrance into the house. The latter barely manages to dodge it before he is verbally attacked and for a while even battered by his wife, until he decides to turn around and go back to the street.

Gualberto’s father will never return to that house. The little boy, thinking that his mother, angry as she is, is angry with him too, curled up, leaning his back against the wall in a corner, crying quietly so as not to be noticed. From the sobs he slowly drifted off to sleep, staying there in that little corner. It was only after a few hours that is mother, now calmed down, took care of him, lifted him off the floor and put him in his bed. He cannot admit it even to himself, as he will have to continue living with her, but a deep hatred was born in him toward his mother, who deprived him of paternal affection that night, a hatred that will later extend to the entire female gender, spilling over to any woman he will meet in the future. He will never be able to love a woman; he will always see her as an antagonist, as someone from whom he will defend himself rather than open his heart to her and give her his feelings.

But let’s go in order. What happens after this episode? There is a gradual change in the child’s character, and although he is very intelligent, he is withdrawn, taciturn, and has difficulty relating to others, especially individuals of the opposite sex, females, and adult people who are not well known to him. He often blushes if he has to talk to a person for the first time, and this creates a considerable sense of discomfort for him, so much so that he prefers to be alone rather than among peers.

Years pass and the puberty phase arrives. Like all boys of his age, he happens to masturbate, thinking now of one now of another girl in the girls’ class - at that time there were no mixed classes yet - who had struck him perhaps by the way she was dressed that day, eyeing her at the entrance or exit of the school or along the corridors during recess. But as he masturbates, that’s when childhood memories come to mind, the pleasure associated with fire, the pleasure associated with the image of the woman about to be burned alive. He thinks of the little girl of his dreams, “What’s her name? Silvia, of course, I heard her called Silvia by her classmates. She was really pretty today, wearing a miniskirt under her black apron, which she kept undone to show off her legs”. Yes, the thought of those legs excites him, but it excites him more to imagine Silvia tied to a pole, with a lighted flashlight coming up to her clothes to set her on fire. “Yes, burn alive, Silvia!” thinks Gualberto, getting more and more excited. “Scream, scream like Smeraldina - HELP! GUALBER-TOOO! - because I will cover the next vignettes with my hands and no one will come to your aid. You will be devoured by flames, just as you deserve, because you are a female. Yes, burn! Burn alive! Yes, yes, yes!”

Precisely because of his shyness and his hatred of women in general, Gualberto until his early twenties, although he is attracted to them, will not consort with any of them. He will continue in his autoerotic activity, always imagining this or that girl, known or unknown, dying in the flames of a stake, like a medieval witch, or of a fire, each time in a different way invented by his imagination, but always and in any case thinking of fire as the triggering element of his perverse eroticism.

Gualberto finally arrives to attend university, the Faculty of Agriculture in Perugia, in a location far from his hometown, far from his mother, whose proximity increasingly oppresses him. On the first days of class, an unusual episode happens. A classmate sits next to him, to his right. She is pretty, her hair is straight blond, her complexion pale, spotted with some ephelides, her eyes light blue, she has a delicate perfume, she wears a knee-length skirt, which rises to mid-thigh in the act of sitting down. Gualberto tries to be indifferent, taking notes as usual, while the girl has only a checked sheet of paper resting on the swivel shelf of the chair that serves as a writing desk. On that paper she does not take any notes. In the upper left-hand corner she writes her name in capital letters, LAURA, draws a small heart next to it with the red pen, then begins to taunt the companion sitting to her left.

«Oh, how distracted, I dropped my pen.»

Gualberto, bending down to pick it up near her feet, cannot help but admire her legs so close to his eyes. As he makes to give her the pen back, she asks him to write her name on the other side of the little heart she drew on the paper. Then she takes the pen back, but holds back his hand, bringing it into contact with her thigh as she waits to be caressed.

«Gualberto. A strange name.»

Realizing that he is embarrassed, as he immediately withdrew his hand, without trying to go up, toward her lower abdomen, as anyone else would have done, Laura tries to make the boy hers in another way.

«I’m not very good at taking notes. I see that you are much more skilled than I am. Could I come and study with you?»

«That wouldn’t be a bad idea, but I am staying at a boarding school run by religious people. We are strictly forbidden to take girls inside.»

«You could come to me, then. I live alone in a mini-apartment downtown. If you’d like, at the end of class, come to my place, we’ll have something to eat and then study together all afternoon.»

Gualberto clearly understands that Laura has no intention of studying, but his purpose is to do all kinds of other things that afternoon, and he is stunned. He who has always been so shy, who has never hit on any girl, is now being lured so shamelessly by her? What does she see in him? There are so many other boys in the courtroom, does he have to come and pick a fight with him? He accepts the invitation, hoping that in fact Laura just wants to study the lessons with him, that those attitudes just represent her way of doing things. But that is not the case; she really intends to get him into bed.

Arriving home, Laura sets herself free, wearing a tiny robe, which leaves her feminine graces, her legs and cleavage well exposed. After having lunch, Gualberto arranges books and notebooks on the table, but she takes him by the hand and leads him into the bedroom. The shutters are closed and the room is in half-light. She pulls off her robe, remaining naked, and begins to undress him as well, pressing her breasts against his chest, being caressed and caressed in turn. Gualberto likes the girl, he could make love with her, at that moment and on other subsequent occasions, but the situation embarrasses him, and his member does not at all hint at getting erect. Laura caresses it for a long time, until it becomes turgid, but when she then, once she has abandoned herself on the bed, tries to guide him into penetration, the erection disappears again. At that point she retreats under the sheets and, annoyed, says to him, «Well, what’s the matter, you just don’t like me or are you queer?»

Gualberto blushes, his cheeks flushed, thanking in his heart that the room is rather dark. While waiting for an answer, Laura reaches for the pack of cigarettes on the nightstand, takes one, and lights it. Seeing Laura’s face illuminated by the yellowish light of the lighter’s flame triggers a series of unexpected thoughts and reactions in Gualberto. The vision of the flame itself excites him, then he begins to think of the lighter as a weapon that, brought close to her hair, or her clothes, or why not, the bed sheets, could be used to give a well-deserved end to that witch in front of him. He sees the tip of the cigarette glow with each pull the girl takes from it, and this excites him more and more. “Burn, witch, burn alive!” he thinks inwardly. Now the erection is there! He moves back closer to Laura who, having extinguished the fag in the ashtray, welcomes the boy inside her body. The intercourse is long-lasting and intense, and at the end she lets out a long cry of pleasure as her orgasm occurs. That scream pleases Gualberto very much, who associates it in his imagination with the cry of the witch dying in the flames above a burning pile.

The boy will never reveal his intimate thoughts to Laura; he will only tell her that he really enjoys seeing her smoke. And this is an incredible thing, as he not only does not smoke, but is usually annoyed by other people’s smoking.

From that day on, Gualberto’s imagination is stimulated by this new fact. Seeing a woman smoke, seeing her use a lighter or a match to light a cigarette, stimulates him in a special way. Each time he imagines that from that small flame a fire can be started to reap that smoker as a victim. All in all, he lets Laura smoke, even if it bothers him a little, precisely because of the fact that it arouses him, and this benefits sexual encounters, which are satisfying for both of them. After an initial intercourse, he himself often lights a cigarette for Laura, just to bring the flame closer to her face, imagining that he is executing her with fire. Then his desire is renewed and Gualberto resumes making love to Laura again.

The relationship between the two lasted for four years, the length of their degree program. But, like all good things, love also fades sooner or later. Laura, probably falling in love with another guy, or perhaps just because she is tired of putting up with the oddities of Gualberto’s behaviors, his long silences, the fact that he often wants to be alone, at some point decides to leave the guy. She tries to do it painlessly, finding the right words; she knows Gualberto’s sensitivity and does not want to hurt him but, at the same time, she wants to get away from him, to regain her freedom.

«You’re an intelligent person, you’re very good, you’re about to graduate with honors. Listen to me, I am the one who is not worthy of you. You’ll have a way to find yourself another woman, although in fact I don’t see well any other person next to you than me.»

Gualberto listens in silence, nodding. He seems not to find the words to answer her, but inside, the words are there and they are sharp as razor-sharp knives.

“Of course, I should have known that women are all the same. Like my mother. They keep you by their side as long as you suit them, then they dump you, abandon you to take refuge in someone else’s arms. Until they get tired of the latter too. Witches, just witches. You deserve only one end: burning at the stake!”

In Gualberto’s mind a thought begins to take hold: to actually kill Laura with fire. He also knows the way to do it; it doesn’t take much. He can lead her to that secluded place where they often went together, a nice spot, at the edge of the woods, on the road to Mount Tezio. There is a little wall on which they often sat and talked and spent unforgettable hours there. Just place a bucket of gasoline behind the little wall. Sooner or later Laura will light a cigarette, and then, with a quick, decisive gesture, he will pour the flammable liquid on her and enjoy the sight of her truly engulfed in flames.

He does. He reaches a self-service and takes three thousand liras³ of gasoline, pours it into a bucket, which he goes and hides behind that little wall, among the grass. The next day he invites his girlfriend to go for the last time to that place dear to them, to have a last talk. She agrees, thinking that Gualberto will finally talk to her with an open heart, accepting the end of their relationship. Unfortunately, when they are there, she notices that he is sadder and more taciturn than ever. She does all the talking; he is silent, nodding his head only. She, at one point, with a nervous gesture, takes the cigarette pack from her purse and lights one. It is time. Gualberto’s heart is pounding, his hand is already clenched on the bucket handle. But no, he can’t do it. He is not a murderer, and besides, he loves her. He is an executioner only in his fantasy, the thing cannot be turned into reality. Then what if an uncontrollable fire develops? He might die too, and that matters little at this point, but that beautiful place, that pristine forest, that wonderful nature, would also go up in smoke. He loosens his grip on the bucket handle and waits for his heart to resume a regular rhythm. Meanwhile Laura finishes smoking and carefully crushes the stub under the sole of her shoe. He brings his lips close to hers in the quest for one last smoke-flavored kiss, after which he utters a few words, «Maybe this is the last time I kiss a girl. Goodbye Laura!»

He drives her home and from that day on he will never see her again. For days on end he thinks back to the scene, masturbating over and over as he imagines pouring gasoline on Laura and enjoying her screams as she is devoured by flames. It will take good and bad for the memory of Laura, her scent, her body, her voice, her cigarettes, to fall into oblivion.

But, as we know, time is eventually complicit, and helps everyone get through the hard times. Once he graduates, Gualberto will return to his hometown. Unable to accept going back to live with his mother, he will take an apartment that will be both his residence and his studio, where he will carry out his freelance work.

Now that he no longer has a woman, his sexual desires can only be satisfied in autoeroticism. As time passes, fantasy is no longer enough. Gualberto takes advantage of the fireplace he has in his house to set up small enactments, miniature pyres. From some magazines he carefully cuts out photographs of women, then places them on top of some small sticks arranged to simulate a bonfire and lights the fire, enjoying the spectacle and achieving pleasure. He often prepares several victims to throw into the fire once it is lit. Over time he perfects the technique more and more, simulating with himself a real witch trial, in which he plays both the role of inquisitor, who condemns the woman, and that of executioner, who lights the stake. He even found a Carmen Consoli song, l’ultima preghiera (The Last Prayer), to serve as background music for his mind games.

To the stake, you hysterical witch,

And your ashes will scatter with the wind.

To the stake, heretical witch,

And thy hands shall never again scatter bad fate.

Gualberto tries to improve his representations from time to time; he goes so far as to seek out larger posters of women in more or less sexy, more or less naked poses. He carefully cuts out the outline of his victim, pastes it on cardboard to make it stiffer, attaches it to a postern pole, putting a lot of wood underneath, simulating pyres closer and closer to reality. At some point the fireplace at home is no longer enough; Gualberto wants to set up a life-size pyre. He manages to obtain an image of a girl, measuring six feet tall, made of thick cardboard, used for an advertisement for women’s stockings. The beautifully shaped girl is wearing only a slip, bra, and hold-up stockings. The advertisement is displayed in a store a short distance from his home; Gualberto knows the owner and makes him promise that when the advertising campaign is over, he will give him that giant picture, as it would go to waste anyway. In the meantime, he looks for a suitable place for his purposes, and finds it, an out-of-the-way, long uninhabited, half-ruined country farmhouse. In an edge of the farmyard he can set up his show, with no danger of causing fire. If someone from a distance sees smoke, little harm, he will think some old farmer is burning weeds.

The thing succeeds well: a few faggots, a pole, the virtual victim on top of the pile, the Carmen Consoli ditty heard through the headphones of the MP3 player. The scene is really exciting for Gualberto, the thing lasts a long time, the flames taking several minutes to reduce the heavy cardboard poster to ashes. The silhouette of his witch disappears little by little, the heat is strong and Gualberto has to move away from the scene a little to avoid getting burned, but it is all so exciting! The orgasm finally comes like a cannonball; he could never feel anything like that making love to a woman. Having recovered from his post-ejaculatory daze, Gualberto takes care to restore the place, cleaning it up and taking care not to leave any traces of what he has done. Of course, such a thing is a bit risky and cannot be done every day, but the place lends itself and the man will occasionally return to enjoy the spectacle of which, at the same time, he is both actor and director. One day he will even manage to obtain a mannequin, the kind used in clothing stores, very much like a real woman. He will prepare it, dressing it in nylons and a skimpy dress, before setting it on fire.

From here to taking a real, flesh-and-blood woman there to be put through a trial and sentenced to be burned at the stake is a short step. Gualberto already thinks of the way to do it. It would not be easy to lead a person there against her will, but some expedient could be tried. He is not very good at it but, overcoming shyness, he could try to seduce a woman, possibly a smoker, like Laura, induce her to trust him, maybe make love to her a few times. He could get a sedative, something to knock her out, lead her stunned to the farmstead, tie her to the pole over some bundles of wood, wait for her to come to her senses, and then...

“What the hell am I thinking?” says Gualbert to himself, realizing the evilness of his thoughts. “I’m going crazy! I can’t do such a thing. All right, I feel hatred and resentment toward women, but I can’t take it out on someone who has nothing to do with my life!”

So, just as so many years earlier he had not turned into a murderer by removing his hand from the handle of the bucket full of gasoline, even at that moment his brain is running for cover.

The man seeks the address of a good psychotherapist and makes an appointment, determined to spill the beans and solve his mental problems. Dr. Battaglini makes him an initial appointment, the secretary seats him in the office and tells him to make himself comfortable, that the doctor will be arriving any minute. Judging from the mirror, Gualberto understands that the session has already begun and that his therapist is already studying him before even beginning the interview with him. The feeling of discomfort increases when he discovers that Dr. Battaglini’s name is Claudia and she is a beautiful 40-year-old woman. He begins to explain to her about his problems with women, about the fact that he gets aroused when he sees a woman smoking and that, after his relationship with Laura, he has not been able to enter into any more relationships, but he is careful not to describe his masturbatory acts in front of fictitious pyres and about his deep hatred of all female persons. He certainly cannot confide these things precisely to a woman; she would never understand them.

«Having a fetish is a completely harmless thing. Many people use it to their advantage to have satisfying sex. You don’t have to worry too much about it. May I call you by your first name? It makes things easier for me. Just as you can call me Claudia.» The psychologist tries to put Gualberto at ease, perfectly aware, judging by some attitudes, that her patient is still hiding something, lots of things. The man looks away all the time, hardly ever looks her straight in the eye, focuses on some objects on top of the desk, occasionally picking one up and fiddling with it. But most noticeable is his so-called self-protective attitude: his hands with fingers intertwined together, held in front of his stomach, his torso tilted slightly forward. Oh yes, that patient is enigmatic, hiding many things at the moment, and it will take a lot of work to get him to open up. It’s a challenge Claudia likes.

The next session, the psychologist pays special attention to showing off her legs, just enough, not too much, and having a pack of cigarettes and a lighter within obvious reach. The mere sight of the pack of cigarettes puts Gualberto in turmoil. After starting the conversation, pretending to play absent-mindedly with the packet, taking it in his hand, opening it, closing it again, putting it back on the desk and picking it up again after a while, Claudia pulls out a cigarette, brings it to her mouth and approaches her patient, who is at her wit’s end. She is trying to provoke him in every way to study his reactions.

“It’s unbelievable! If she asks me to light her cigarette, I’ll take the lighter and set her on fire, starting with that flowing black hair. She can’t do that to me. She can’t!” says Gualberto to himself, with excitement rising inside his pants.

She, with the unlit cigarette in her mouth, reaches up to his face, gently takes him under the chin with one hand, bringing his gaze straight into her eyes.

«Look at me, am I not a beautiful woman? I am also free at this time. If you wanted I could make love to you, here, now, on this couch. I know you want me, do you want me to light this cigarette? Here, take the lighter, you light it for me!»

To him, his heart leaps. Without taking his eyes off her beautiful emerald green eyes, he exerts all his willpower on himself to avoid picking up the potential murder weapon, takes the cigarette out of her mouth and kisses her. The woman does not object; after kissing him a little, she gets up from the couch, goes to lock the door and, lifting her skirt, offers herself to her patient.

Gualberto doesn’t get it anymore, he likes that woman, and she is seducing him. Indeed, for Claudia that patient is quite a professional challenge, he is quite a gloomy guy to work with, but she has also fallen in love with him.

After a few sessions, in the various senses of the term, Gualberto was able to confide to Claudia all that he had been doing for years in his solitary intimacy, his fantasies of wanting to see women burned alive like witches, of wanting to be their inquisitor and executioner. The psychologist manages to go back with Gualberto to those episodes of his childhood that deeply marked him, explains to him that his hatred for women de- stems from the bad relationship established in his time with his mother, and also manages to bring back to his mind that comic strip, which he never mentioned to anyone throughout his life, as something, although latent, almost completely removed from his memories.

«You associated fire with the sexual sphere, and then with your hatred of women. But now you understand, and you know where your turmoil comes from. If you are aroused by the sight of a woman smoking, using fire to light her cigarettes, there is nothing wrong if even during intercourse you imagine a violent scene that brings you to orgasm. The important thing is that you have understood that it must be pure fantasy, never to be put into practice in reality, because you would never hurt the person you love. And now you have also found a person to love. You are an intelligent man, you know how to be sweet and caring, other than violent. I have really fallen in love with you, believe it or not.»

Claudia, at the end of the speech, lights her cigarette, and this time it does not upset Gualberto so much, who at almost fifty years old has found love and rediscovered himself.

The two will marry and lead a peaceful married life, although they will never have children. Claudia, in order to fulfill her partner’s fantasies, will even agree at times to make love to him inside a circle of fire, made by pouring gasoline on the ground around them, with the heat of the flames lapping at them, their bodies illuminated by the flickering light of the flames. He will never feel any fear and will have rightly placed his trust in Gualberto.

Artemio, on the other hand, at the umpteenth intercourse with the prostitute having his pantyhose tightened around her neck, pulls harder, to the point of suffocating his victim. Once the woman has collapsed lifelessly, he achieves ejaculation and causes his semen to spill out to soak the woman’s half-naked body. When the Police arrive at the scene, the killer is still there, in a state of confusion, with his own member in his hands.

CHAPTER 3

I closed the Handbook of Criminology by E. G. Ganongi, placed it back on my desk, lowered my reading glasses, and fixed my gaze on the heavenly eyes of Sergio, who until that moment had listened to me in silence while sitting in the chair before me.

It was him who had insisted on reading those pages of the criminology treatise.

«Of course, Sergio. What we have read now on this text makes us reflect on the fact that some perversions of the human mind can suddenly result in episodes of violence, which can also repeat themselves in a serial way. But above all about the fact that nothing can be taken for granted in this field. Certainly, from my point of view, I would have expected Gualberto to turn into a heinous murderer, while Artemio would have been happy with erotic games with his prostitute. But, coming to us, if the episode of the other day is not simply the result of Giulianelli’s actions, but was concocted by someone to the detriment of the two women, how are we to proceed? Other than the booklet, the candle butt, and the torn photo, we don’t have much to work with. So here’s what I thought, if you agree.»

I approached, as I usually do, the whiteboard, took the marker, and began to write down my goals.

«I would say that the first thing to do is: EXECUTE A SEARCH IN THE APARTMENT OF ELEONORA GIULIANELLI. Do you agree, Sergio?»

«I couldn’t agree with you more, Caterina. We might find elements useful to understand whether Giulianelli was in fact the protagonist of the dastardly act or whether someone else pushed her to do it, if not even set the death trap for the two, who at this point would have both been unsuspecting victims.»

«However, we must keep in mind that the car had been locked from the inside, so Eleanor’s responsibility, in whole or in part, must be there.»

«Why point to only Eleonora as the author of the fire? What if Cecilia, on the other hand, had engineered it, to get rid of her possessive friend and finally be able to be in peace with a man? She might have staged it to put the blame on her friend and thus come out clean. Why not? Sure, Eleonora stood there and let the flames devour her body without trying to have an escape, but she may have been under the influence of drugs, or narcotics. Bertini was convinced she could make it out of the vehicle without sustaining too much damage. She had considered that the flames had little oxygen and the fire would develop slowly. When the time came, she would have thrown herself out of the car, sustaining only a few burns. But the guy who shattered the window also screwed up her plan.»

«About the latter: PROVIDE FOR THE INTERROGATION OF GIOVANNI BARTOLI. He was at the scene of the crime. He is a key witness. We will have to be very careful when we question him. He may not necessarily be the individual we are looking for. He may not be entirely unrelated to the matter. He could have been there just to admire his handiwork, perhaps the shattering of the window glass was the finishing touch, to set the fire ablaze and watch his victims die. Besides, he would have had plenty of time to leave the clues we found in the ground.»

«Congratulations, Caterina. I would never have suspected him. And that’s not necessarily the case anyway. Would you allow me to write on the board a goal of mine? CHECK THE RAPPER CIRCLES FREQUENTED BY ELEONORA AND CECILIA.»

«Sure, Sergio. If only to have a chat with Cecilia Bertini’s alleged lover as well. And let’s not forget about her: AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, we will have to INTERROGATE BERTINI. And, finally, we will have to focus on what was written in this little book, THE DIARY OF A PSYCHOPATH. The forensic team finished their findings and handed it back to me. No fingerprints of known criminals were found; a handwriting survey was performed, which resulted in nothing. Cimino even analyzed the type of paper, its chemical nature, its weight, the presence of any watermark, to try to figure out its provenance, without coming up with anything. Notebooks like this, with a hard cardboard cover, can be found in any stationery store and are produced by Cartiere Miliani of Fabriano.»

«Very little to work with! Let’s try to read what this demented man wrote.»

I flipped through the first few pages of the notebook, skipping over the Gospel parable we had been racking our brains over in the previous days, and lingered over a first sheet of paper in which the verses of a rap song were given.

There are a hundred ways to die,

a hundred ways to die,

a hundred ways, a hundred ways,

a hundred ways to die.

There are a hundred ways to die,

a hundred ways to die,

a hundred ways, a hundred ways,

a hundred ways to die.

The first way to die is when you iron

your clothes and clothespins get tangled in the threads

maybe you reach out to grab a sweater

the clothesline comes off and you fall off the balcony

that’s why I don’t iron, sometimes I don’t even wash

if there’s water and electricity

electrocuting me from the cable

You risk death from the day you are born

That’s why every moment you leave is decisive

the risks are around especially in the city,

I run you over at the streetcar stop

today it’s hot, I take a shower I cool off

then I slip on the marble I fall and hit my head

I had a party with fireworks

I lost control, the building exploded

and the one next door too,

you see the dead in the yard

you were passing with the booster

and exploded from the seat.

«It is the lyrics of a song by Fabri Fibra, a well-known rapper originally from Senigallia itself. He came from nowhere and made a fortune with his demented songs», Sergio commented. «This reinforces my belief that the one we are looking for is connected to rapper circles. Go ahead, Caterina, what else can we deduce from what this creep wrote in the booklet?»

«Well, a lyric that maybe our guy is inspired by. A hundred ways to die, would he want to kill a hundred people in a hundred different ways? As an aside, in the final verse there is again a reference to hell, and it’s the second one. Whether our guy wants to be inspired perhaps by Dante’s

Inferno? From school memories, Dante had divided hell into innumerable circles, each divided into circles, where the dead, according to the sins they had been guilty of in life, were subjected to the most disparate punishments.»

«Yeah, from being immersed in muddy swamps, to having to push boulders, to the torment of icy waters and so on. Of course! In the Middle Ages, pederasts, like witches and heretics, were condemned to the stake. And Dante had lumped these together with the lustful, who, if I remember correctly, were punished with eternal fire precisely in analogy with the same punishment inflicted on them by the earthly court. And so...», and Sergius snapped his fingers to emphasize his insight. «Our psychopath condemned the two lesbians, pardon, the two gay women, to the torment of fire. For their sin, the just punishment.»

«So, in your opinion, Sergio, should we expect his next victim to be perhaps a glutton and punish him by immersing him in foul-smelling mud, under an incessant rain of hail and snow, then impersonating Cerberus to eventually tear his victim to shreds? Even if we take Dante’s Inferno, we can find a hundred ways to punish potential sinners from which our man could be inspired. Which do we start with? How can we succeed in preventing his future moves, if any?»

«You say well, if there are any. We’re not necessarily doing all these disquisitions for nothing! But go ahead and read that notebook. Maybe we’ll find more elements to build the psychological profile of our hypothetical serial.»

«Neither of us is a criminal profiler in the American sense of the term, but get this. You don’t have to be an expert here to get an idea of this individual’s profile!»

After a couple of pages left blank by the owner of the notebook, the psychopath’s demented rant left us truly bewildered.

“Seduction is identified by certain colors. Red: it is the color of love, passion, fire, but it is also the color of blood. I can seduce a beautiful young woman, a virgin, make love to her, make her feel the shivers of passion, make her body vibrate, hear her first moan, then scream, and then, a few moments before she reaches the height of pleasure, take a very sharp knife and slit her throat. Everything is tinged in a few moments with red, the red of passion, the red of blood. Black: the color of darkness, of night, of death, of the bogeyman who has populated our worst nightmares since childhood. Death is my seductress: what better friend than her? What better lover? Giving or receiving death leads to extreme pleasure, to irrepressible pollution, to sublime orgasm, which with no other companion you could achieve. Death, not the one that catches you in your sleep, but the violent one, the expected one, the conscious one. The death that will come for me too, will lead me in the moment of passing to experience the most intense pleasure, never experienced in all my mortal life. At that moment I will see angels coming to translate my soul to heaven or demons to plunge it into hell. The one and the other will compete for my spirit: who will win? It is not given to me to know. Who is it that gives us life and death? God. So, if I can decide my life and death, I AM GOD! But, you who read will say: no, this is the devil. Then I am the thesis and the antithesis, the Christ and the antichrist, the angel and the demon, the good and the evil. I will die, but I will remain immortal!”

The colleague, who had never yet had a chance to have that notebook in his hands, was dumbfounded. He tried to do some thinking: «All right, we’ve figured out that he’s a creep, or a crazy person. I wouldn’t entirely dismiss the idea that this may be a female individual. His intent is to make victims and then try to take his own life himself-that’s as far as I can tell from those words. He is a thrill-seeker, looking for the scenery. Perhaps his death will be the most important scene he has prepared. Probably his victims are not chosen at random. We follow the idea that he wanted to punish the two lesbians with the same punishment Dante would have reserved for them in hell: burning in the eternal flames. The reference to hell we find in the last stanza of that rap song: I pay a guy to tear me apart, could be a reference to Cerberus. And again: my desire for hell does not resist, it insists... Again the reference of giving death to someone, and then wishing it for himself as well: I seek the perfect suicide. And then he made reference to the colors, red and black. From the combination of those two colors, we get a violet, maybe a purple-red, the same color as the cover of that notebook. This could be a trail to follow. If our killer plays on colors, we could go and see how many and what colors the manufacturing company markets those hardcover notebooks in and maybe we’ll get an idea of how many potential victims there might be.»

«Yeah», I retorted. «We’d have to associate the colors with the sense our guy gives them, though, and it’s not easy to reason with his head. I really wouldn’t know where to start. And again: should these colors be associated with the lyrics of Fabri Fibra’s song or with the tercets of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno? Or to both elements? Or to neither, as the psychopath is just making fun of us?»

«There’s another forensic paper there, Caterina. What does it say?»

«He is talking about the candle butt found near the booklet. It is a special kind of candle, for sacred ceremonies, and one that is not found in supermarkets or tobacco shops. It is for sale only in specialized stores, of Sacred Art or Esotericism items. I think there are very few establishments here in the area that sell these things. We should have our guys work on it. Maybe some shopkeepers could provide some useful information on who has purchased this type of candle in recent times.»

«Let’s do this. Let’s put Andrea and Roberta to work; it will be their job to search Giulianelli’s apartment. Until the magistrate’s authorization for the search arrives, they will inquire about the colors of the hardcover notebooks and visit sacred art stores and those selling esoteric items to try to figure out who might have purchased those candles.»

«What about us?»

«And we are going to have fun. Today is Friday and at Mamanonmama the night is dedicated to rap and improvised shows by these demented rappers. It is the club that Eleonora and Cecilia used to frequent. You’ll see, we’ll have an interesting evening.»

I was about to retort that my partner would not be very enthusiastic about my evening out, then i reconsidered and i refused to discuss. Sergio’s proposal tickled me, and not a little.

As soon as Adinolfi came out of my room, I picked up the phone and warned Stefano that I would be returning very late that evening.

«If it’s a work matter, Caterina, there’s no problem», he replied. «I’ll call the baby-sitter for Aurora right away. You know that Friday nights are sacred to me, with my little orchestra we perform at the Ambaradan.»

Aurora was now almost three years old, and she was a very bright child, already doing her own little thinking, and I think she was also beginning to understand that her mom was out too often for work, even at times when normal people come home to spend time with their families. But, in spite of everything, I would never have given up my job, I was too passionate about it and I would never have allowed myself not to be personally present in the investigations, even in the field, of the cases that were given to me from time to time. Fortunately, I had a partner who was much more homely than I was, but who, above all, had never manifested unfounded jealousies and had always supported me, perhaps sacrificing himself on my behalf, but without making it a burden. And I had always tried to deserve the trust he placed in me. If in those days it had crossed my mind that Commissioner Sergio Adinolfi was indeed a handsome, charming, and moreover intelligent man, I had immediately banished to the depths of my unconscious any thought that was not related to our working relationship. I knew that he was also a happily married man.

CHAPTER 4

Sergio drove along the uphill stretch of road that, after passing a viaduct, allowed him to cross over the A14 highway and shortly led to the large parking lot of Mamanonmama.

«I don’t understand why you were so insistent on bringing your dog along. They certainly won’t let him inside the venue, we’ll have to leave him in the car, so I don’t see the point», he told me as he searched for a possible parking spot.

«Furia has always been invaluable in my investigations, and I don’t intend to leave him out of this one. He is a well-behaved animal, he doesn’t litter, and he has a dog tag on the State Police force. He goes with me wherever I want, no one can leave him outside a public place unless I decide it!»

Sergio was stunned, but preferred not to speak when, having fixed the car, he saw me making Furia come down of the trunk and putting him the leash ,taking him with me.

A guy with a shaved head, six feet of muscle, dark glasses despite the darkness, half-sleeved shirt despite the cold, clothing designed to show off his mighty biceps, blocked us at the entrance to the disco.

«Where do you think you are going dressed like that, what’s more, with a dog? I think this is no place for you. Air!»

Furia straightened his fur over his back and began to growl at the guy. While Sergio remained behind me, in obvious embarrassment, I pulled out my badge and showed it to the bouncer, who exploded into a hearty laugh.

«Ahahah! Cops! Have you come looking for trouble or what? If you do not have a warrant, please be seated. And even if you do have one, please return at a time when no show is scheduled. In short, you are not welcome. I repeat: air!»

Phlegmatically, I released Furia from the leash. Standing upright on his hind legs, the animal pounced on the man bringing his own teeth within inches of his genitals. As is well known, a dog about to lash out, particularly in such a vital area, strikes fear into even the most heinous thug in this world. No one can defend against the skill and speed of a dog that has decided to bite. I took advantage of the surprise and moment of fear to trip the guy, knocking him to the ground. Furia was immediately on top of him, this time growling within millimeters of his face. I was quick to reach into the pocket of his baggy pants, slipping out a pouch containing at least a hundred pills.

«Eheh!» I apostrophized him with a grin. «Now I’m the one having fun. I don’t think this is sore throat candy. Much less that it can be stuff for personal use only. Furia, stay!» On command the dog returned beside me, continuing to growl in the direction of the energetic man. I threw the bag at the man’s feet and resumed. «But for tonight let’s all be good. I didn’t see anything and you let us in. Complimentary ticket, clearly, offered by the club management, including admission for my good friend on all fours as well.»

The bouncer, no longer threatened by Furia, rose, shook off the dust and let us in.

«It was not my intention to begin with such an uproar. I thought I would come undercover. to take a peek, observe the environment. So everyone in there will already know who we are. I don’t know if we’ll get out of here alive. Your dog can defend us from a bouncer, but little he can do against any firearms.»

«Don’t worry, Sergio. The place is crowded, and no one will dare touch us. I’m convinced that, knowing of the presence of policemen, if someone has a guilty conscience they will make missteps, and we will notice.»

«Bah, in here the cleanest has the mange. I don’t think your strategy will get us anywhere.»

«Meanwhile, let’s sit down, order a non-alcoholic drink and enjoy the show. The music is unbearable, however, I see that a performance by a belly dancer of Moroccan origin is planned. This should get interesting for a male like you!»

Sergio smiled at the joke, while a waiter, without our even having ordered, served us two inviting glasses containing colored liquid. I tasted from my glass and realized that the drink was not exactly 100 percent non-alcoholic, but it tasted good and began to sip it. Sergio did likewise, imitating me.

«At least, it seems they are not trying to poison us!» I said.

«But to increase our alcohol level, yes. Let’s go easy on this stuff!»

Meanwhile, to the rhythm of pounding music, above a platform, several individuals were performing hip hop dance virtuosities. In particular, there was a boy who upside down supported the full weight of his body on his right hand resting on the ground, while his legs twirled in the air. Others, boys and girls, acted as sidelines, improvising no less strange figures.

After half an hour or so, the music changed, taking on more exotic tones. The boys left the platform to favor the performance of Amina, the belly dancer. The beautiful girl, dark-haired, not very tall, but with a body of perfect proportions, dark skin and oriental facial features, must have been in her early twenties. She reached a cube and, dancing sinuously to a melody that gradually increased its tempo, shed her robe and veil, remaining in a tiny bikini that offered a well-rounded view of her feminine features. Her olive skin was made highly polished by an ointment with which she had carefully sprinkled herself. Still dancing, she passed through the audience to gain the platform on which hip-hop dancers had been performing until a short time before. Someone meanwhile had prepared the platform, which had the appearance of a long catwalk, for the continuation of the Moroccan beauty’s performance. A few meters of glass shards, then a few meters of glowing embers, and finally an oil bottle and flashlights, for now extinguished, had been set up, in that order. When the spotlights illuminated that path, I could not help but shiver.

«Stay calm and watch the show», my colleague whispered to me. «There is no risk, everything is under control.»

I had to exert great strength on myself in order to continue watching what was happening on the stage. The girl had reached the beginning of the path, the glass shards, and was still moving in step with the background of a rap song.

See how I laugh, how I bat my eyelashes,

How I dance barefoot on bottle shards.

What I’ll do, I don’t know, I’ll think about it tomorrow,

if I like you I’ll tell you, and I won’t cut your hands off.

I’m half smart, the other half is out,

if you don’t know what I’m like,

you touch the wires and die.

I’m here, and there, I disappear if I feel like it,

My life is crumpled in a light bag.

I don’t stop at stop signs, if I go slow I grow old,

if I crash, I transplant, and good night to the bucket.

There is no Hell or Heaven here anyway,

It’s easier to die than to blow your nose.

So, I accept candy from a stranger,

pull the thread that takes off the dress.

I let the cat into the sheets,

come into my bed, but one night only.

Barefoot, to the rhythm of the ditty, the opening track of a Fausto Leali song titled “In Life There’s More”, she had covered all the way, first on the shards of glass, then on the glowing embers, which turned red as she passed, sizzled and let whitish smoke rise. I did not know whether at that moment the girl’s skin glistened more from the ointment or from the sweat. She took the flashlights and had an assistant light two of them, beginning to slide them slowly into contact with the skin, first of her arms, then of her legs. He then had two more flashlights lit and began to twirl them quickly, passing them from one hand to the other, in a very dangerous game of skill that made her face appear within a circle of fire. When finished she threw the flashlights into the air, deftly picking them up again, one at a time, to place them, still lit, on a stand. She continued to hold the last flashlight with one hand, passed it several more times in contact with her skin, then took the bottle of oil, put a certain amount of flammable liquid into her mouth, emitting it through her lips in the direction of the lit flashlight, to make flames that dissipated in the air. When finished, she poured the remaining contents of the bottle on herself, brought the flashlight close to her again and, in a moment, was engulfed in flames.

People were clapping and cheering. I, beside myself, made to get up from the table to go and somehow rescue the poor woman, but Sergio was quick to hold me by the arm.

«Stop, I told you, it’s all planned. What makes Amina’s skin so shiny is a protective ointment. She can hold on for a while without getting burned. At her nod, her assistants will lock her inside a heavy black sack, smothering the flames, and she, after a few seconds, will come out unscathed to the applause of the audience.»

And so it went, indeed. The girl, amid the applause, retreated backstage, while some attendants cleaned up the platform, and then allowed all the patrons of the club to join her to indulge in the dance, but mostly the high.

«If you had told me that there was such a show to attend, I certainly wouldn’t have come. You’re a bastard, Sergio, you knew very well what it was like», I snapped at my colleague, who nevertheless remained calm and answered me in a calm voice.

«I knew what it was like, but I had never seen it live. The fact that the chick handles fire so casually, and that this club was frequented by Eleonora and Cecilia, doesn’t that give you pause?»

«Of course it gives me pause, and how! Let’s join her in her dressing room and arrest her right away. We’ll squeeze her hard at the police station.»

«Don’t rush into anything, Caterina. We have no evidence against her, and the magistrate would never confirm her arrest. Let us be clever, give her some time to settle down, and then go and ask her a few questions. If we have any suspicions, we’ll bring her in for official questioning.»

Adinolfi was right, as usual the impetuosity of my temper was taking over from rationality, and I needed to be joined by a cool, calculating, rational guy like him. And at last, since the days of Inspector Giampieri, I had a deputy who could keep my impetuosity at bay and with whom I was sure to find a good feeling.

After putting fifty euros in the hand of one of the attendants who had cleaned up the stage at the end of Amina’s performance, we slipped backstage and reached the dressing rooms. On the door of the one we had been shown was a sign that read “Fabiana Grossi”. As we exchanged a quizzical glance, in indecision whether to knock or not, from another door came a distinguished-looking gentleman, dressed in a suit, dark jacket and tie. A deep scar, running across his forehead almost to his right eyebrow, gave him an unremarkable air. I understood that he was the owner of the club, who apostrophized us in a falsely polite manner.

«Do you wish, gentlemen? If you’re looking for the restroom, you’ve taken a wrong turn, in this part of the premises public access is prohibited.»

«But not to the Police», I said, making the move to pull my badge out of my pocket, blocked by the guy who with a wave of his hand made me realize there was no need. He certainly knew Commissioner Adinolfi well.

«Well, commissioner? Isn’t it enough that the NAS⁴ and ASL⁵ inspectors are coming to check up on us? Now you’re bringing it on too? You even come here with a sniffer dog?» the guy said, sarcastically. «My place is clean, you know! I keep straight and keep my staff straight, too. I have nothing to hide, but I would prefer you to come at different times, during the day, when the club is not crowded with the public.»

Sergio patted him on the back and replied, «Dear Nicola, as for going straight you have a past that certainly does you no credit. I’ve noticed that there are drugs going around in here, ecstasy in particular, but you certainly don’t know anything about it and are not responsible for what your employees do, without your knowledge! Something to complain about the safety of the club, though, especially during the number where Amina plays with fire, there would be, and you are personally responsible for safety. But that’s not why we’re here. We just want to have a chat with this Moroccan girl, who may not be Moroccan at all, since her dressing room door says Fabiana. Let us talk to her and get the hell out of here.»

«Not now, and not here! If you are interested, visit her at her home.»

«Oh, come on, you don’t want to force me to do a report on the safety of the venue, the placement of fire extinguishers, their functionality, the fact that there’s a show where open flames are being used and there’s not even the shadow of a firefighter...»

«Enough is enough, I will not tolerate blackmail, commissioner. You know very well that you need a warrant to come here. Do you want me to call my lawyer and remind you of the procedures?»

Fortunately, to break up the squabble between the two, Amina, or Fabiana, peeped through the dressing room door, wrapped in a pink bathrobe, her raven hair wet, a lit cigarette in her mouth and a hair dryer in her hand.

«If it is for me that you are here, be my guest. I love admirers who come to see me in the dressing room. No flowers for me?» he said puffing the cigarette smoke almost as he puffed the flames during the show. Then turning to the club owner, «Don’t worry, Nicola. I’ll get by with little, I have nothing to hide, neither from the police nor from others.»

We thus found ourselves alone in the small room together with the girl, who sucked one last drag from her cigarette and put it out in an ashtray.

«It doesn’t pay to play with fire in that terrifying way, go ahead and smoke!» I told her. «Anyway, explain, is your name Amina or Fabiana, are you Moroccan or Italian?»

«Some Arab blood runs in my veins, even though I was born and always lived in Italy. The last name, Grossi, is my father’s, but my mother is of Tunisian origin. She is the one who taught me belly dancing and all the other performances with which I perform in my show. She is the one whose name was Amina, and I, in her memory, use the same name as my stage pseudonym.»

«Her name?» I retorted. «Did she die? Did she happen to be burned alive during one of her performances? They didn’t have time to put her out?»

«No, no, none of that. A trivial car accident, however, which cost her her life. But I don’t think you came here to ask me about my mother. Or did you?»

Furia sniffed wagging her tail at the girl, who returned it with a caress. Satisfied, my trusty partner curled up yowling and yawning. Fury was not showing hostility toward her, and that was a good sign.

«You want me to tell you about my relations with the two lesbians, don’t you?» she resumed, anticipating our questions.

«Don’t be irreverent», I replied, a little irritated by the girl’s tone. «Eleonora and Cecilia were a gay couple.»

«Yeah, and if they had continued being a gay couple instead of getting between me and my boyfriend, maybe they wouldn’t have ended up roasting.»

«Your boyfriend?» intervened Sergio.

«That Cecilia had started targeting my boyfriend, Gianluigi, for some time. Gian is a couple of years older than me, 22 years old, and comes from a good family. He always has cash on hand, travels in nice cars, and is a good-looking guy. We had been together for about a year and a half and I trusted blindly that he was only in love with me. Cecilia is 37 years old, a good 15 years older than him, and she wanted to take him away from me, not because she was really in love with him, but because she saw him as a good catch. You see, doctor, young guys are flattered by the fact that they are sleeping with a woman older than they are, as they think she is much more sexually experienced than a young girl, and therefore can give them more intense pleasure. And so Gianluigi fell for it. But I understood one thing, the chemistry between those two lesbians-that was still there, they were agreeing with each other to try to squeeze the boy like a sponge and eventually leave him with a palm to his face. One evening, while Gianluigi was sitting at a table exchanging effusions with that Cecilia, I approached her with the bottle of oil I use in my show and told her in a hard face that if she didn’t get it into her head to leave my, albeit former, boyfriend alone, I would set her on fire.»

«You threatened her? To procure for her an end that is then the one she actually met with her friend? My dear, at this point I think your position is not among the easiest!» I said, although I didn’t really see that girl as a ruthless murderer.

«These are things that are said. I threatened her, yes, but I just wanted to make a scene, I would never enact such a thing.»

«Did anyone else hear you saying these words to Cecilia?» Sergio asked her.

«There were several people in the tables around who may have heard. I was angry, and I certainly wasn’t speaking softly. A little further on was Eleonora herself, sitting next to Nicola, the owner of the place, so they must have heard it too.»

«The little song that plays in the background of your number has strong references to violence, sex, and especially you mention hell. Do you know that, based on all the elements we already have in hand, we could place you under police custody and perhaps indict you as the suspect responsible for the death of Eleonora Giulianelli and the serious injuries inflicted on her friend Cecilia Bertini? What about your boyfriend, or ex-boyfriend, in short Gianluigi, what about him? Where can we find him? We would need to question him as well», Sergio urged her.

«I imagined that you would suspect me. But, as you see, I have not hidden anything from you, because I am innocent, I am not the one responsible for the lesbian car fire, although I confess that I am not at all sorry for what happened. I am willing to follow you to the police station, if you want, for official questioning. I repeat, I have nothing to fear because I have done nothing wrong. As for Gian, I don’t know what directions to give you. Since that evening when I yelled at him and Cecilia, he has not been seen again, he has completely disappeared from sight. You don’t even bother to look for him at his parents’ house. The mother called me several times on her cell phone, worried because she had not seen her son for days. She thought, hoped that he was with me, but I explained that I, like her, had not seen him since that evening. After the incident that happened to those two, she did not call me anymore. Maybe she made up her mind that Gianluigi was not with me and that it was better to turn elsewhere, I don’t know.»

Seeing Furia still quietly squatting at Fabiana’s feet, I decided that the girl could be trusted.

«All right, Fabiana, that’s enough for tonight. But keep yourself available, we will have to summon you to the police station or police headquarters for a real interrogation. I advise you to come with a good lawyer. Again, your position at the moment is not the easiest. Can you tell us the last name of this Gianluigi, please?»

«Pietropaoli. His family lives at 136 Via delle Capanne. Goodbye», and said goodbye, lighting another cigarette.

«Are you sure it was a wise decision to let the girl go free? In my opinion, she told us the least part of what she knows», Sergio said as soon as we were out of the club, as we walked toward the parking lot to get to his car.

«I really trust Furia’s attitudes toward the people I deal with. My dog has not shown any hostile attitude toward Fabiana, which makes me think she is a sincere person.»

«If you say so! But I wouldn’t trust her too much. The chick is a fakira, she walks barefoot on glass shards, on burning embers, sets herself on fire and comes out unscathed. She may have other gifts, ability to hypnotize, for example, or ability to conceal her emotions brilliantly. She could be a great manipulator, as you asserted a few days ago. That is, she can manipulate our minds, by hypnosis or other simulation techniques, to make us believe true what is not or, conversely, make us believe false what is. And don’t think that your dog is immune to such manipulative arts.»

«I don’t know, but what interests me now is not to make him a scapegoat. We found a good lead and we need to work on it. We’ve made it late enough for tonight. Let’s go back and rest. Tomorrow we will inform the quaestor and magistrate of what we have found, and we will decide together with them how to move forword.»

INTERLUDE 1

It was about 3 a.m. when Fabiana introduced the key into the lock of the front door. After her mother’s death, or rather after her presumed death, she had continued to live alone in that terraced house in Sant’Angelo, a quiet hamlet of Senigallia in the hills of the immediate hinterland.

That house had been the scene of a tragedy when Fabiana was little more than a child, barely 14 years old.Andrea Grossi was an educated man with a degree in modern literature, but through a series of unfortunate coincidences he had had to devote himself to a job that had nothing to do with his degree. In order to make ends meet, he had gotten himself hired as a transporter for a wholesale fruit and vegetable import-export company. Several times with his truck he had traveled to Tunisia to load large quantities of dates and bananas. He would leave from Senigallia, arrive in Brindisi, where he would board a ferry to Tunis and manage to return, if all went well, within three or four days. On one of these trips he had met a beautiful belly dancer, Amina, an 18-year-old girl, quite a bit younger than him, but with whom he had fallen madly in love. Amina, besides being able to dance spectacularly, was a snake charmer, a sword eater, practiced kabbalah and divinatory arts, and knew how to walk barefoot on burning embers and sharp shards of glass. When Andrea saw her in the seedy club where she performed he had only one wish, to take her to Italy to be his wife.

An Arab who had noticed how Andrea was observing Amina had approached him, proposing an approach with the girl. «Five hundred dinars and in ten minutes you will find my daughter, unveiled and willing to offer you her body, in a room upstairs.»

Andrea considered that for that girl he could spend the required amount and more. Once he met her, he would find a way to convince her to follow him to Italy. He paid the agreed sum and made love to the girl. It seemed that Amina was insensitive to pleasure, and the man was dismayed to learn that, at an early age, she had undergone the horrendous mutilation that goes by the name of infibulation.

«Come away with me, please. I’m not promising you a life as a princess, but you’ll always be better off than in the midst of this squalor, where your father is just waiting to sell you to the highest bidder!»

«I am my father’s only source of income. He would rather kill me than let me leave with a foreigner, not even a Muslim to boot. He always has his Bedouin knife with him, a knife with a fine horn handle, extremely sharp double edge and sharp point, in a moment he would cut my throat like a chicken.»

«I will speak to your father, offer him money, buy you, as is the custom in these parts.»

And so it went that for five thousand dinars Andrea bought his wife and took her to Italy. From their union was born Fabiana, a little girl who resembled her mother in an extraordinary way.

Everything seemed to be going well between the couple. Amina had made a name for herself as a belly dancer and was performing for pay in some local discos. This had made it possible to raise the family’s economic tenor, so that Andrea had quit his job as a transporter, resumed his studies, entered a few competitions, and managed to win a clerkship at the Unicredit bank.

There he found himself working with a beautiful colleague named Carla, who was originally from Veneto but had settled in the Marche region for years. Carla was blond, tall, had sea-blue eyes and two fabulous legs that she always knew how to show off, carefully choosing miniskirts, sheer stockings and stiletto-heeled shoes. She was married but did not disdain cheating on her husband when the opportunity arose. And, no one knows why, she had fallen in love with Andrea and wanted to sleep with him. The man seemed to be indifferent to her charms, and this posed an extra challenge for Carla, who was not in love with him, but she had to make love to him, otherwise her self-esteem would go well below her vertiginous heels.

As is well known, a man, when tickled by a woman, may resist for a while, but eventually gives in. So Andrea, taking advantage of an evening when Amina was to return late for a disco show and Fabiana, now 14 years old, had decided to sleep over at her girlfriend’s house, invited Carla to her home for an intimate dinner and a "harmless" after-dinner drink. After all, they were both married and aware that it would be just a little sex thing, pure pleasure. If they had kept it a secret from their respective partners, no one would have suffered, and the two of them could have indulged in a few encores until they got tired of it.

But fate sometimes holds nasty surprises. Fabiana had been feeling unwell at her friend’s house and had managed to contact her mother at the disco during a break in the show. Amina had decided to leave her performance half-heartedly, even foregoing her fee, in order to go retrieve her daughter and bring her home. So the two returned well ahead of schedule by Andrea, who was caught red-handed, in bed with his own mistress.

Blinded by jealousy, the Tunisian woman had used as a weapon against the betrayers the first thing that came his way, two oil bottles she used in his show. In the blink of an eye she threw the bottles into the bedroom, which shattered, scattering the flammable liquid on the floor, then lit a match and set the room on fire. Carla found escape through the window, threw herself into the void, and it was fine for her: the cottage was only two stories, and although the impact with the ground was ruinous, she got away with a fractured left femur and two cracked ribs. Worse came to Andrea, who in his efforts to reach his wife to try to calm her down and give her improvised explanations, did not realize that he was engulfed in flames. He felt stabbing pains on the skin of his naked body, collapsed, and, at that point, what the flames did not do, the smoke did. He suffocated to death.

The young Fabiana, who had witnessed the scene, was horrified at the sight of her father’s end, but at the same time she was fascinated by fire. Like her mom, she knew how to play with that element, knew how to make it her friend and ally, and knew how dangerous it could be if she lost control of it. And her mom, in that moment, had lost control not only of fire, but also of herself. Forgetting about her little girl, she had rushed to the road, got behind the wheel of the car and sped down the provincial road full of treacherous curves. Facing a hairpin bend, the car went off the road, plunged down the slope, overturning several times, until the gasoline tank exploded and the vehicle reached the bottom of the precipice in flames.

Rescuers did not find Amina’s body inside the vehicle. In all likelihood the woman had been thrown from the passenger compartment, but no matter how long they searched, neither a body nor a living woman, however battered, was found in the area. It seemed that Amina had vanished into thin air. The slope was indeed impassable, steep, full of ravines and thorny bushes. It was said that the woman’s corpse was certainly there, somewhere, although it had not been reborn, and Amina was officially declared dead.

The tutelary judge had to consider the case of the minor Fabiana Grossi, who overnight had become orphaned of both father and mother. She still remained heir to the cottage where she had lived with her parents, but until she came of age she would remain in the care of an elderly aunt on her father’s side.

Fabiana, already fourteen years old, had an independent spirit and soon evaded the elderly guardian’s supervision to return to live alone in her own house, which had been restored after the fire. To earn a living, she began performing in nightclubs as her mother did. Even spectators asserted that the girl was even better than her poor mother at performing those acts in which she played with fire.

Then had come the love for Gianluigi, a boy who was very tender and sweet to her. His parents were not very happy with his relationship with that fire-eating soubrette of sorts, but Gianluigi had indulged Fabiana and, for a time, even moved into the latter’s house to share the same roof.

Everything was going in the best possible way, until that Cecilia had entered the scene, who was trying hard to take her love away from her. And Gianluigi had fallen right into it, not realizing that Cecilia and her friend Eleonora had set their eyes on him for the sole purpose of their solace. As an alternative to their erotic games between women they wanted to try a variation with a man: who better than a vigorous young man like Gianluigi? After Cecilia had seduced him well, and even persuaded him to leave his girlfriend, he found himself in the bedroom with two women to please. Not that he minded, but it was a strange situation that he could not have sustained for long. He would have liked to give up and run back to his Fabiana, but by then the disaster was done. That very night he had heard his ex threaten Cecilia venomously.

“She is dangerous”, Gianluigi thought. “As her mother did in her time, I consider Fabiana very capable of killing not only Cecilia but also me with fire. Better to stay away from her for a while, at least until she calms down a bit!”

When he heard about the accident that happened to Eleonora and Cecilia, he had no doubt that his Fabiana was responsible. Fearing for his safety as well, he hid from both Fabiana and his family of origin for a few days. After holing up for a while at the home of one of his old schoolmates, who lived in a remote hamlet in the Arcevian mountains, he had plucked up his courage and returned to his ex-girlfriend’s house. He still had his keys and had gone inside, unaware of what would await him in there.

It was evening, Fabiana was on stage at Mamanonmama. He was going to wait for her when she returned and explain how those two witches had circuited him. He was certain that she would understand, that he would be forgiven and welcomed back by his one true love.

On the relatively short drive home from the club, Fabiana had thought back to that evening. After all, she had expected that the police would question her: if she had not told them herself that she had threatened Cecilia Bertini, someone else would have done it sooner or later and it would have been worse. She was quiet, she had done nothing, she had never carried out those threats. Maybe those two lesbians, as reported in the local newspapers, had done it all by themselves, a murder-suicide, or maybe a simple accident, why not? Maybe really those lighter gas canisters were defective, who knows! But she cursed herself for what she had said a few nights earlier, especially in the presence of witnesses. Now she was the number one suspect. But the police had not arrested her, and that was a good thing. She had been believed. And Gianluigi, what could have happened to him? He had not been seen around or at his parents’ house since that night. What could have happened to him? Perhaps he was hiding out of fear. Fear of whom? Of her, Fabiana, his sweet little girl, as he used to call her? He didn’t have to; she was ready to forgive him at any moment, as long as he came back to her. And when she returned home, she hoped that when she opened the door, she would find the light on and Gianluigi waiting for her.

That night, however, she felt like a bad feeling, which became more pronounced when she realized that the key in the keyhole had not triggered the lock. The door was only pulled up; someone had entered before her. Thieves? And what could they have taken? Perhaps Gianluigi! Heartened by this thought, she groped for the switch in the dark to turn on the light. The front door led directly into a large hall. She found the switch, but the light did not come on. Her vision meanwhile had adjusted to the darkness, and Fabiana sensed the silhouette of a person sitting in the center of the hall, his body as if abandoned on a chair. A strange smell hovered in the air, as if something electrical had short-circuited, or burned. The circuit breaker panel was near the entrance: she reached for it, opened it, felt the downed switch by touch, and turned it up. Had her back not been turned, she might have seen the silhouette of the man positioned in that chair trying to make her understand not to. It was a moment, a glow, as if the house lights had come on all at once only to go out again. Sparks and smoke enveloped the silhouette of that person in the center of the living room.

In the glow, Fabiana, turning sharply, saw Gianluigi, naked, tied to a chair, his feet inserted in a metal basin with water inside, where an electrical cord connected to an outlet was going. It was the power cord torn from the iron, lying on the floor near the scene. Gianluigi had a few convulsive movements, then stiffened, now lifeless, while sparks still lit his naked body.

Fabiana was horrified: she had been responsible for the death of her beloved. But who had done that to him?

Out of the darkness came the figure of a person, his face covered by a large carnival mask, with two large round ears and a prominent nose. The girl recognized the figure, Mickey Mouse. The latter slowly pulled the plug from the socket, then approached Fabiana, who was paralyzed with fear. She was firmly convinced that now that masked individual would mercilessly kill her, too. Instead, he went to the electrical panel, lifted the circuit breaker switch and lit the room.

Fabiana could realize that Gianluigi had been barbarically tortured, tied to that chair with ropes, scalded with the red-hot iron in several places on his body, until she herself had given him the coup de grace, electrocuting him with electricity. Then she turned her gaze to her tormentor. The mask had two small holes for eyes, around which were drawn spirals that, when stared at by the girl, gave her the optical sensation of a rotation, at first slow, then increasingly swirling.

«And what are you going to do to me? How much will I have to suffer before you kill me? I am ready, I can withstand the fire, I will resist your torture! Do you want to rape me? Do what you will with me. Now that you have killed my love, nothing matters to me anymore!»

The individual began to respond, in a voice altered by the mask and perhaps a voice distorter, so that it was not clear whether it was a male or female voice, as Fabiana fell prey to a kind of hypnotic “trance”, following the optical illusion of those spinning spirals.

«He sinned in lust and got the punishment he deserved. Not you, your sin is sloth. You could have done and didn’t. You could have kept looking for your mother’s body or demanded that someone do it. Maybe she would have been found alive. But instead you didn’t, and resignedly accepted being told that she was dead. The punishment, for you, will be much longer and more painful.»

These last words faded in the head of Fabiana who, now succumbing to the individual, allowed herself to take her arm, let a ligature tighten around it and finally let a powerful dose of pure heroin be inoculated into her vein. Immediately the girl slumped to the ground in a state of complete unconsciousness.

CHAPTER 5

It was very late when I returned home. I hurriedly slipped the key into the keyhole to escape the bitter cold of the night as soon as possible. Stefano had not yet returned home; the bed was empty. Just as well, I thought, at least I would not have to give long explanations. I noticed the baby-sitter sleeping blissfully in the room next to Aurora’s, took a quick look at the little one and crawled into bed, pretending to be asleep when I heard my partner arrive. Unfortunately, I could have afforded very little rest as, at an unspecified hour of the night, the cell phone on the bedside table began to ring incessantly. I was about to hit the rejection button when on the display I was able to focus on the name of my caller, Sergio Adinolfi, as well as the time, 5:45.

«Damn it, Sergio! We just said goodbye and you’re already calling me back? What is it?»

«Don’t worry, I am not trying to court you. I wanted to warn you that the body of a young man has been found in the countryside near the Sant’Angelo locality of Senigallia. Everything suggests that it is Gianluigi Pietropaoli, and he is in a pitiful condition. I assure you it is not a pretty sight. I have already notified forensics and medical examiner, but I would like you to come to the scene as well.»

«Time to get dressed and arrive: I think it won’t take me more than three-quarters of an hour. But, who found the body at such an absurd hour?»

«A hunter from the area. Today is Saturday, it’s hunting day, and the guy had gone out early with his dog. The pre-dawn hours are ideal for game, especially after a clear night accompanied by a nice frost. His dog, a beautiful English setter, immediately pointed at a pile of loose earth and dry leaves, started digging and showed the body of the dead man to his owner, who did not delay in grabbing his cell phone and calling 113.»

«An English Setter who decided to compete with my Furia. So be it! I’m up and coming.»

Outside, the cold was felt even more than when I had come home, but looking up to the sky, one could see a wonderful sight. A thin quarter moon and a myriad of stars were roofing our beloved planet. I slipped into my car, put the heater on full blast and tried to get as quickly as possible to the place Sergio pointed out to me.

When I arrived, the scene of the medical examiner making his findings on the body was beginning to be illuminated by the early morning light. Everything was covered by a white blanket of frost. The medical examiner, Dr. Donati, was the same one I had met about a couple of years earlier during the investigation of the Villa Brandi massacre.

When he finished his work, he lifted his shiny shaved head and addressed Sergio and me.

«Death was no more than three or four hours ago, although the cadaveric rigidity would suggest a longer time. The individual died electrocuted, he was killed by the electric current, and this favored the faster establishment of the rigidity phenomena. He appears to have been tortured before being killed. There are rope marks on his wrists and ankles, so he must have been tied up, and then scalded in several places with an iron, judging by the patches on his skin that are shaped like this object. The body was found completely naked, and no clothes were found nearby. He is supposed to have been killed in another place and then transported here. There is to be said that the body is soaked in an oily liquid, which from the smell would seem to me to be petroleum, but on this element forensics will be more precise. I think that whoever brought him here wanted to set the body on fire to make it unrecognizable, but perhaps the operation was not possible, because of some mishap, I don’t know, the passage of a car or the approach of some curious onlooker, so they settled for covering it with dirt and leaves. That’s all for now, I will be able to give you more details after the autopsy.»

As the doctor left the field to the forensic team, whose guys were already placing numbered tags next to what they thought had relevance to the crime, one of the officers who had arrived on the scene with Sergio called our attention a few steps away.

«There’s something here!»

Covered in frost were a notebook with a green hardback cover, a half-worn candle, and two photographs, one of a man torn in four parts and one of a woman, begun to tear on each of the four sides but not broken completely.

I motioned to the officer not to touch those objects, as forensics would take care of repertorying them, then turned to Sergio.

«It sure looks like our man has struck again. And a very short time later.»

«I’m not used to drawing hasty conclusions», he replied. «It is not necessarily the case that someone has an interest in misleading us, in making us believe that we are facing the same killer who went into action the other day. At the end of the day, we still don’t have certainty even about the Giulianelli-Bertini episode, we still don’t know whether it was in fact a crime or not, although we have plenty of elements to believe so. Rather, the girl we met last night at Mamanonmama lives a few hundred meters away. I would say it is obligatory to pay her a visit. As long as CSI is doing its job, let’s go kick her out of bed!»

More than out of a desire to see Fabiana again, I followed Sergio in the hope of entering the girl’s dwelling to finally find myself in a heated environment.

The “fachira’s” car was parked in the driveway. The front door of the townhouse was just pulled up, and I only had to push it to enter a large, tastefully furnished living room. A burning smell hovered in the air, as if some electrical equipment had short-circuited.

Sergio motioned me not to touch anything, put on a pair of latex gloves, and looked for the light switch. There was no electricity, and since the early morning light could barely illuminate the room, my colleague pulled a small flashlight out of his pockets and, using the beam, began to carefully inspect the room. In quick sequence he illuminated an iron that had apparently fallen on the floor, its cord attached to an outlet but sheared off by the appliance, the other end going into a basin full of water, a chair with pieces of rope attached to the back, and...

«Fabiana!» I couldn’t help but hold back a cry. The girl was lying slumped on the floor, motionless. Highly disregarding the fact that I was not wearing latex gloves, I rushed to her and went for the jugular pulse, which I felt faint but present. I turned her over and practiced on her the resuscitation maneuvers I had been taught at the various BLS courses my superiors had occasionally forced me to attend.

As I saw Fabiana begin to move in fits of vomiting, I noticed the unmistakable bruise left by an intravenous injection on her left arm. The syringe and tourniquet were a short distance from her on the floor.

«Quick Sergio, call an ambulance! I think it’s an overdose, heroin or whatever she injected herself with. We have to try to save her if we still want her testimony.»

Even before I had said it, already my colleague had dialed 118 on his cell phone keypad and, without my even realizing it, was finishing giving directions to reach us to the First Aid dispatcher. Having closed the communication, he turned to me, «I think that more than taking her testimony, we will have to proceed with her arrest. There is enough evidence in here that Fabiana killed her ex-boyfriend. And that, in all likelihood, she premeditated everything. The other day she tried to kill Cecilia Bertini with fire, as, moreover, she had already threatened. That Giulianelli then got in the way as well mattered little to her. In fact, I will tell you more: I think Fabiana and Eleonora were in cahoots with each other to kill Cecilia, because each of them had a valid reason for doing so. But, when the facts were tested, Giulianelli was unable to deflect from the burning car, and she ended up dead. Fabiana, for a few days, held her former lover, Gianluigi, captive, tortured him in revenge for his betrayal, made him suffer, until he suffered an excruciating death. Then she took his body away from here, doused it with oil and would have set it on fire if something had not happened that forced her to desist from the intent. All under the influence of hallucinogenic substances. Back here, in a flash of lucidity, or perhaps she had premeditated that as well, she decided to take her own life in turn and used the weapon she had at her disposal, a nice overdose of heroin. Unfortunately, we came along, and now life imprisonment will not be spared for her, not even the best of lawyers.»

«Just a moment! Yourself, just now, said that we should not rush to conclusions. There are things that still don’t add up: the booklets, the candles, the references to hell and Fabri Fibra’s song. Let’s let forensics do their work here too, and then consider all the elements from a logical point of view. And let’s also have Fabiana’s car examined; I don’t think the girl was able to carry Gianluigi’s corpse by herself on foot for almost a kilometer. If she transported him in her car, surely there must be unmistakable signs. On top of everything, the asphalt of the driveway is covered with a uniform blanket of frost. Come, look! You can distinctly see the prints of the soles of our shoes, but there are no tire marks. My guess is that Fabiana came back after the show at Mamanonmama was over and never moved the car from there.»

The ambulance sirens distracted us from our talk. The emergency vehicle was followed a short distance away by a white sedan, on the dashboard of which a sign reading “PRESS” was prominently displayed.

«Well, the reporters have smelled the scoop», I said. «Go ahead and give them your side of the story, avoiding unnecessary scaremongering related to the presence of a psychopathic serial killer roaming the area, otherwise we’ll be bombarded by the press and TV until we solve the case. And I assure you, it’s not easy to work with these people in the way.»

Unfortunately for me, the Corriere Adriatico reporter was an old acquaintance of mine, a high school classmate who had also taken courses in Criminology with me at the University of Macerata. Then she had applied criminology to journalism, devoting herself to crime reporting, while I had applied it to my job as a police officer.

Adele Salvucci, that was her name, recognized me and immediately came toward me. There was nothing I could do to avoid her.

«In short, Caterina, after the Villa Brandi massacre, finally it looks like we got our work cut out for us, in this area that seems so quiet and yet quiet it is not! A couple of years ago I wrote articles that made you and your colleague from Jesi, Dr. Zanardi, look great. Now don’t tell me you won’t give me some insight into the investigation you are conducting. There are already two dead bodies and two dying people in this whole thing. I’m really guessing that the rumors that this is a serial killer are true. What lead are you following? Do you already have any idea what this psychopath’s next moves will be? How are you going to expose him?»

«Hey, hey, you’re a firecracker! Listen, Adele, we’re in the investigation phase, and I can’t violate investigative secrecy, you know that. So just stick to stating the facts. As soon as I can, in agreement with the quaestor and the magistrate, I will call a press conference, and I assure you that you will have a lot to write about. But for now, please let me do my work with due serenity and objectivity. Perhaps other people’s lives are at stake, so utmost restraint, at least on my part!»

When I noticed that the white RAI van was also arriving, I turned to Sergio: «There is nothing more for us to do here. How about we go back to our cars and get to our warm office at the police station?»

«Sure, but not before we have honored a hearty breakfast at the Café Centrale in Senigallia! It’s on me!» he replied, giving me a look of understanding. He, too, couldn’t wait to leave that place.

CHAPTER 6

The first thing that, from the basement of the forensic lab, arrived above my desk was the notebook with the green hardcover, accompanied by a letter of a few lines signed by Aldo Cimino. No fingerprints had been found on the notebook, and the handwriting expertise had been able to establish that the ink and handwriting were 100 percent compatible with what had been examined in the previous days in the purple-covered notebook. The two booklets were handwritten in capital block letters, a method used by our “man” to hide his true handwriting, however, Forensics could establish with certainty that they were both written by the same hand.

«Yep, the same hand of our psychopath», Sergio reflected, looking with concern at that notebook on top of my table. «What will he want to tell us this time?»

Without wasting too much time on useless disquisitions, I began flipping through the notebook. On the title page was the title again.

THE DIARY OF A PSYCHOPATH

Moving on, on the first page was a small part of Fabri Fibra’s song.

There are a hundred ways to die,

a hundred ways to die,

a hundred ways, a hundred ways,

a hundred ways to die.

The first way to die is when you iron

laundry and clothespins get tangled in the threads

maybe you reach out to pick up a sweater

the clothesline comes off and you fall off the balcony

that’s why I don’t iron, sometimes I don’t even wash

if there’s water and electricity

electrocuting me from the cable.

«He is clearly referring to the way he tortured and killed Gianluigi», I observed. «It talks about irons and electricity. Although I don’t understand the part about the cloths, the clothespins, the wires, the clothesline and the falling off the balcony. It is obvious that this is what the song says, and our murderer took his cue from its words.»

«If we want to continue to think that Fabiana Grossi is the author of everything, and that she wanted to commit suicide in the end, we might think that maybe, after killing Cecilia and Gianluigi, she would have thrown herself off the balcony. Of course, she realized that the balcony of her home would be too low to achieve the goal, and she fell back on the heroin overdose», Sergio intervened.

«You keep proposing this solution, which is perhaps the easiest and also the most logical to follow. But precisely because it is too simple I believe that Fabiana is not an executioner, in fact she may be another victim of our psychopath. But let’s see what else is written here.»

And here we come to green, a color that can have a thousand shades, from the restful green of a meadow, to the deep green of an emerald, to the green reflections of ocean water, to the dark, sour green of bile. Seduction may be related to the desire for earthly things, for wealth, for abundance, for extreme lust, but all this will lead to the damnation of those who desire this. Just as the emerald, which appears so beautiful and so precious to us, can turn into a stone so hard that it causes death, so our passions, so beautiful and so intense, can lead us to perdition. Suffering can take you suddenly, imagine you are lying on a green meadow, enjoying the caress of the sun, a dark cloud comes along, swollen with rain and a thunderstorm breaks out, lightning strikes and that’s the end for the oak tree and for you who were lying nearby enjoying nature. Nature that can be a friend, but can also become an enemy. Or suffering can take you slowly, reduce you to consumption before leaving you helpless on the ground. Then you will pray that death will come soon, but instead it will still delay. For you have faults to atone for, and you cannot die before you have suffered enough in punishment for what you have been guilty of. For years you have lived in the comforts, you have wanted to satisfy your instincts, even the most repressed ones, make love to people of the same sex, or to several partners at once, you have played poker your money, and you have won, adding wealth to more wealth. But your spirit does not enjoy, and then the evil, the physical and the psychic, takes you and does not leave you for days, weeks, months, years. Until you ask: God, let me die, for this life has no more meaning. But the Lord will not please you, and will keep you alive with no more affection, no more love, just like a dog. Then you will have to take your own life, and so you will be damned forever.

«Really distressing, but I just can’t make sense of these words or relate them to our investigation», I said.

«Well, it could also just be a puzzle to mislead us from the reality of the facts and go thinking who knows what», Sergio tried to intervene. But at that moment Andrea and Roberta entered, wanting to inform us about their work and what they had found in the searches of Giulianelli’s and Fabiana Grossi’s apartments.

«We have some interesting news, I would say», Andrea exclaimed. «But ... you speak first, Roberta.»

«Sure.» Roberta Gualandi, the only woman on the team besides me, had been assigned to follow Fabiana to the ER and keep abreast of her condition. «From the casualty front, we have some good news and a little less. I left one of our officers from the Senigallia district to guard Grossi in the ER, as I would not have missed the search of the two women’s residences for anything. I received news just now that Fabiana’s condition has improved and she will be able to be discharged this very evening. Since the Magistrate, Dr. Moscatelli, has issued an arrest warrant against her, and given the serious evidence against her, our colleagues in Senigallia will escort her here as soon as the doctor has signed the discharge papers, and we can proceed with the interrogation immediately. The less good news is that Cecilia Bertini passed away this morning. As a result of the very severe burns she sustained, she went into renal failure and, despite undergoing intensive dialysis treatment, did not make it. I am almost inclined to say it is for the best. If she had survived, she would have been horribly disfigured forever.»

«Yeah», I interjected. «We couldn’t question her at all, though, as she never came out of her coma. Her version of events could have been very useful!»

«And anyway, one more charge against Fabiana Grossi», Roberta concluded, yielding the floor to her colleague, Inspector Andrea Rosati.

«We didn’t see each other again last night, Doctor, but Roberta and I had already worked on what she had asked for, the notebooks and the candles. We had pointed out to her that those hardcover notebooks are produced by Cartiere Miliani of Fabriano and are sold in stationery stores and supermarkets in the area. They are marketed in five different colors: purple red, dark green, indigo, scarlet red and brown. So far we have found one purple-colored notebook and one green-colored notebook. The presence of three other colors makes us think that our killer planned three more murders. Given the origin of the candles from a store in Ancona that specializes in esoteric items, called Esostore, and is often frequented by our Fabiana Grossi as well, we thought about the possibility of the matching of the colors with some esoteric symbolism, but we still did not quite understand what meaning to give to it all. In any case, we learned from the store owner that Fabiana’s missing mother, Amina, was well versed in the practice of hypnosis and had often purchased cards with drawings on them that cause optical effects in the beholder and help in enacting these practices. In the search of Giulianelli’s house, we noticed ashes of a sheet of paper abandoned in an ashtray. Starting with the fragments of paper that were not completely burned, forensics was able to reconstruct the design that was originally on the sheet. Basically, a series of arcs of circles arranged in such a way that, upon staring at the drawing, it appears to begin to rotate, gradually more and more swirling, until it takes on the three-dimensional shape of a vortex. Dr. Cimino says that experts in the hypnotic arts are able to get their victim to see letters, writing, appear at some point, as if spilling out of the center of the vortex, to command the hypnotized person what to do. We found a myriad of similar cards at Fabiana’s house. Surely they must have been the ones her mother used, but everything points to her using them this time.»

«This, guys, is a good hunch. On the surface we have all the evidence to turn Fabiana Grossi’s detention into an arrest on several counts: multiple murder, kidnapping, concealment of a corpse, illegal possession of narcotics. Although the fact that everything wants to point us to her being the culprit in the two crimes seems too obvious, almost artfully constructed.»

«Too easy, in short!» echoed Andrea. «That’s what Roberta and I also thought. It almost seems as if the evidence was artfully constructed and disseminated to frame Fabiana. Although we were not asked, we took the liberty to investigate a bit about the disappearance of Fabiana’s mother, Amina, the Tunisian.»

«Fabiana told us that she died a few years ago in a trivial as well as tragic car accident», Sergio asserted.

«Yes, and indeed she did, but if we go to read the records of the incident, which moreover was closed and filed rather hastily, we find that a lot of strange things happened that night about six years ago, and of most of them Fabiana, then a young girl, was a direct witness. Amina, having returned home earlier than expected, surprised her husband in bed with her lover. Blinded by anger, she set fire to the bedroom, helping herself to the oil she used for her shows. Fabiana’s father lost his life in the flames, while his mistress, a certain Carla Lanari, found escape by throwing herself out of the window and escaping with a few fractures and a prognosis of forty days. It seems that Amina, beside herself with the deed she had just done, got behind the wheel of her car, only to run off the road and plunge into a cliff, right near the place where we found Gianluigi’s body.»

«Historical eternal return teaches!» once again Sergio intervened. «In the girl’s psychology it could be a kind of tribute to the memory of her mother.»

«Wait to draw conclusions, doctor. I’m not done. The car, plunging into the ravine, caught fire. Fire again, as you see. This element does seem to recur in wanting to punish the protagonists of this story. But Amina’s body was not found inside the passenger compartment of the car’s carcass. It was said that perhaps the woman had been thrown out as the car crashed, but her body was never found. The case was dismissed, as it was clear that Andrea Grossi’s killer was his wife, who died in the car accident. In any case, there was also no great effort to try to find the woman’s body in the escarpment. It was said that the location was too inaccessible and the search was suspended in my opinion too hastily. The press, at the time, sharply criticized the actions of the police, but especially of the magistrate, Dr. Aloigi, who in order to cover up the scandal, which involved the wife of a close friend of his, a well-known businessman in the area, had hushed up the whole story. In fact, there is not even a hint of an interrogation against Carla Lanari in the records. The latter, once healed, resumed her job as a banker and still remained at the side of her important hubby, who apparently was well aware that his wife was not exactly faithful to him, but had always tolerated his escapades, as long as they did not arouse scandal and did not end up in the newspapers for this nonsense.»

«One moment, Andrea», I interrupted him. «Would you have me think that Amina might have survived the accident?»

«Yeah, and that she might have lived in the shadows so far and, why not, she might be the architect of the crimes!»

«But what would be the point of laying the blame on her daughter, even almost going so far as to kill her?»

«I don’t know, but we don’t know all the implications of the story. Maybe Fabiana witnessed something that her mother would not want to see come to light sooner or later. Or maybe, because of her morbid jealousy of her daughter, she is taking it out on the people who have had emotional or otherwise sexual relations with her. Or maybe even the two of them, mother and daughter, are complicit with each other, and the fact that they are tramorting Fabiana, taking care not to kill her, is part of an artfully devised plan that we are falling for.»

«My dear Andrea, these are all conjectures, albeit witty ones. But it will be difficult to convince a magistrate that we want to hunt for a ghost. One thing we can do, though: sound out that damned escarpment inch by inch, to try to find some remnant of poor Amina, some shred of her dress, some part of her skeleton, some personal item. If Dr. Aloigi in his time had closed the case, it will certainly not be his colleague Moscatelli who will allow us to reopen it. We will have to play smart, claiming that we want to search the escarpment for other items referable to the Pietropaoli crime. Also try to contact, with appropriate discretion, you mean, this Carla Lanari, ask her questions, cautiously, keeping it vague, but trying to get as much information as possible.»

At that moment the phone on my desk rang. The ringing was that of an internal phone call. I hurried to answer it: it was the quaestor. «Damn it, Caterina! My phone is red-hot. What were you thinking promising reporters a press conference on the Pietropaoli murder? Already the press knows all about the fact of the connections between this and the Giulianelli-Bertini murder. Dr. Moscatelli is infuriated by the leak and fears that stories from a few years ago, which his colleague Aloigi had hushed up because he did not want a close friend of his to be implicated, may resurface. We are talking about Commendator Zeppilli, an entrepreneur of Venetian origin who has big interests here in the Marche region and is politically protected by the Regional Council, as he gives a living to several hundred families of honest workers. So, I took the liberty of convening local press and TV for seventeen o’clock, basically