63

GANZA HAD PLEADED with them, had said his wife was a manic-depressive who hadn’t been taking her lithium — he could produce a doctor’s note to prove it. She couldn’t go to prison, he insisted; she wouldn’t cope. His relentless entreaties made Scamarcio wonder whether Mrs Ganza had in fact underestimated her husband’s feelings for her; made him wonder whether it wasn’t as simple as him being ‘in love’ with Arthur. Ganza claimed to know nothing about ‘last night’s party’ or why the guests hadn’t shown, and insisted that if he did he would have given it up freely — anything that might help lessen the charges facing his wife. But when it came to the wider question of the parties themselves and their regulars, he remained tight-lipped. This was his limit, figured Scamarcio. Fear would stop him from going any further.

Scamarcio left Garramone at the station, wanting to head over to Aurelia at the morgue to run the new scenario past her. But he was aware that it wasn’t just her professional opinion he courted. The events in Sicily and Tuscany had left him wrung out, in need of some kind of emotional connection: again that sensation returned, building for several days now, that he needed someone in his life who counted, who he had to be there for and vice versa. Instinctively, he sensed that that person might be Aurelia. If he were honest with himself, he’d been quietly wondering about this for a while now.

When he walked into her office, she was resting her head on her desk, with her arms crossed above her. Somehow it disturbed him. She looked as if she might have been shot.

‘Are you all right?’

She jumped. ‘Oh, Scamarcio! I was just tired, that’s all. You caught me napping.’ She held up a finger. ‘Whatever you do, don’t say you’re sorry.’

He raised both palms. ‘Understood. May I sit down?’

‘Help yourself.’

He pulled out a dilapidated plastic chair, and took a deep breath: ‘Any chance we could be dealing with both a murder and a suicide?’

‘Your dead rentboy again?’

He nodded, and talked her through the events of that morning. When he was done, she stood up and walked towards the window, and looked out. Her hair was good in the sunlight, glossy, like something out of one of those TV ads, thought Scamarcio.

‘It’s certainly possible that he injected the morphine and then used his last moments of lucidity to position the camera before he was set upon.’

‘Would morphine do that to you? Make you so acquiescent in the face of death, would you just lie there like that and let someone stab you?’

‘Depends on the amount you’d taken, but, given his now supposedly suicidal state, I’d say, yes, it could. And there were no clear defence wounds, as I said.’

‘If Mrs Ganza hadn’t come along, what would he have done with that camera, I wonder? Just left it beside his bed to be discovered along with his body?’

‘Seems like it, yes. Was it left running when it was put on the shelf?’

‘The CSIs seem to think so, yes. It looks as if he wanted it to be seen straight away when the body was found. Maybe he hoped an inquiry would start from there.’ He checked himself; he’d said too much.

‘Why did he want it to be seen? What was on it?’

Scamarcio remembered that he’d kept the contents of the camera to himself, and had chosen not to divulge them to Aurelia. He wanted to share it with her now, but knew that it would have to keep: he had to wait until all the loose ends were tied up. ‘If you can hold on a couple of days, I’ll tell you then. Let me take you for that drink, and I’ll fill you in.’

She raised her eyebrows at him: ‘Whatever you say, Scamarcio.’

He wasn’t certain if that was a yes or a no, or whether she’d forgiven him for last time, but he smiled anyway. ‘I’ll give you a call.’

‘Sure.’

He didn’t know what to do next, so he just pushed back the chair, turned, and left the room.

As he headed home, the exhaustion felt bone deep. Now, nearly forty-eight hours after they’d first left for Gela, the sun was low in the sky once more, and he resolved to turn in as soon as he got home, to try to get some sleep and recover from this, the strangest of days.

As he reflected on it now, he saw that Arthur had probably intended those photos to be seen immediately in the hope that an inquiry would start from there. Although he hadn’t considered stabbing as a suicide method, ultimately it had served his purpose in rendering his death more dramatic and triggering a police investigation. Ironically, Mrs Ganza had simply aided him in his final aim and made it more likely that her husband would face trial for his involvement with this depraved club. If she had in some ways been attempting to protect his professional reputation and financial security while dealing him a huge personal blow, she had only succeeded in the latter.

His mobile buzzed in his jacket. Garramone was on the line: the tone was flat, neutral now, from exhaustion perhaps: ‘The lawyer claims that there’s a clear case for diminished responsibility with Mrs Ganza. Doctors’ records show that she’s been in and out of private mental facilities for years. And, of course, they’re not best pleased we talked to her without a brief being present. They’re saying that, given her illness, they’ll strike her statement before it gets to court.’

‘Could they?’

‘Possibly, but we’ll just get her to say it all again with the lawyer there. She doesn’t seem to have any problem talking right now.’

‘They’ll sedate her and shut her up.’

‘No, Scamarcio, they won’t. Don’t worry, it will come good.’

‘Any news on your friend? Anyone grilling him yet about his involvement in a Mafia …’

The empty line echoed back at him.