Matteo had had a miserable night, in part because of the unrelenting, tropical heat. Bathed in sweat, he was rolling back and forth in bed. A heat wave had been gripping the region for days.
Matteo couldn’t remember his small attic flat ever having been so hot. It was like being in an oven. But it wasn’t just heat keeping him awake.
There was something else, too. Matteo loved his job, but some parts of it he just couldn’t stand. The task ahead of him was one such part.
In the morning, he had parked the patrol car on the riverbank road and had taken a look from a distance at the property with the construction trailer on it. It was located directly on the Serchio, bounded by a low willow fence, and was about the size of a football field. A few small trees stood on it. Matteo didn’t understand enough about the local flora to be able to say what they were. Chestnuts? Or oaks? In any case, they were tall, and he felt sick at heart to think they would have to die to make way for a bus park. Aside from that, the property was overgrown with wild, thorny bushes. A well-trodden path led directly to the ageing construction trailer, which stood in the shade of two tall trees and emitted a resiny smell. Presumably it had been there for decades. The tyres sagged and were overgrown with heather. Wild ivy climbed up the sides of the construction trailer and onto the roof. The sun had taken its toll on the paintwork, so the original green was barely recognisable. Where the steps led into the interior, there was a small porch, and a kind of jerry-built terrace, which had been cobbled together from odd bits of wood.
As Matteo stepped closer, a monotonous buzzing sound reached his ear. He looked up, but was blinded by the sun. Maybe there was a wasp nest in the trees.
Immediately before the terrace steps, he stopped, put on his service cap, took another deep breath and cleared his throat. “Gaetano?”
Two magpies cawed angrily above him—almost as if they wanted to scold him for what he was about to do.
Heavens, they were right. All morning he had racked his brains over the gentlest way of letting the drifter know about the inevitable. It was an unwritten law that Gaetano inhabited the construction trailer when he was in the area. So far, no one had cared, least of all the owner—if he existed at all. Matteo rather suspected the trailer had been parked here ages ago and forgotten about.
“Gaetano?” he called out again, a little louder this time.
But there was no answer. He didn’t hear Caesar barking either, which led him to believe no one was there. He toyed briefly with the idea of simply leaving a note, but he supposed he wouldn’t be let off that easily.
He took a step back and looked at the construction trailer. It seemed quite spacious. With its wooden porch, it reminded Matteo more of the caravans from a circus. There were even flower boxes at the windows, in which no flowers grew, but rather some kind of herbs. Thyme, maybe.
There was a battered-looking rocking chair on the terrace. The weave of the seat was torn. Since it was oriented in such a way that one had a direct view of the river, Matteo suspected Gaetano wasn’t bothered by that little flaw. In general, it was a dreamy place down here. Nothing but almost untouched nature, and the constant roar of the Serchio in your ears. And of the wasp nest.
Once more, he half-heartedly called Gaetano’s name and then turned away. But he paused when something caught his eye. Or rather his nose. There was the aromatic resin smell of the trees all around. But there was something else, too. An unusual smell that seemed vaguely familiar to him. He had noticed it the day before yesterday at the scrapyard. It smelled metallic somehow. And unpleasant. Frowning, he climbed the steps, put his hand on the door handle and pushed it down. The door wasn’t locked.
“Hello?” he asked. “Gaetano? Are you there?”
He felt a mounting sense of discomfort. Wild camping or not, it didn’t feel right to enter someone else’s home without permission.
As he took his hand off the handle, something came into his field of vision that surprised and shocked him at the same time. Something had dried onto the door handle. It was brownish red. Matteo ran his hand over it, held his fingers in front of his nose and smelled it. Metallic, he thought. Dried blood?
Alarmed, he looked around. Now he also recognised stains on the wooden floor of the terrace. Even the rocking chair was covered with dark red speckles.
Carefully, he pulled the door open. He had to press his hand over his mouth to ward off a stench that hit him like a wave.
Holding his breath, he entered and saw utter chaos. The buzzing he had heard from outside wasn’t from a wasp nest in the trees. It was coming straight from the trailer. Flies buzzed around the entire interior, but they seemed to be concentrating around the middle of the room. Matteo looked at their centre-point and saw the silhouette of a man lying on the ground.
Although his gut rebelled against it, he stepped towards the man. Only a little light penetrated through the dirty windowpanes. He groped for a light switch, found it, but it didn’t work. Almost immediately, the flies decided he was an unwelcome intruder. A black cloud surrounded him, which he tried to wave away with both hands.
Matteo couldn’t help himself. He rushed to the windows and tore them open. The atmosphere inside the construction trailer changed instantly. The sun, now shining glaringly through the open windows, revealed the abomination in its entirety. A man was lying on his stomach on the stained carpet in front of the bed box and the adjacent seating niche. Most the flies had gathered at the strangely deformed back of his head, and Matteo didn’t have to look closely to see why. He let his gaze wander down the corpse. The Jesus slippers, the frayed linen trousers and the recently gleaming-white shirt, now soaked in blood…
He recognised the dead man immediately. It was Gaetano. Matteo rubbed his face, trying to digest the horrible scene before him. God knows it was too early in the morning to see a corpse. Especially when he knew the dead man.
His thoughts flashed past each other as he looked around with suppressed panic. Everything was a mess. The contents of the cupboards had been strewn carelessly around the construction trailer. He recognised old books, crockery, clothes and lots of towels. His eyes fell on the silver harmonica. All the drawers were open. They had been ransacked. Even the wall cladding had been ripped out in several places, so the sheet metal framework behind it was visible. It seemed someone had been looking for something.
It was immediately clear to him he had a murder victim on his hands. And like it or not, he would have to call the forensics team in.