It was time for the meeting. I made my appearance at the passport office and greeted Mr Fisichella. He had a fresh, almost normal look – his hair was neatly combed, his face was shaved and his clothes looked less creased than usual. We got a coffee from the coffee machine and my gastritis woke up shortly after. Then, without hesitating, we headed to the offices of the central police station. Outside, the ancient Porta Nuova quarter of Palermo shone with glorious sunshine that kissed the crowns of the palm trees.
As we approached the offices of the homicide team, we attracted the attention of people around us. Mr Fisichella hadn’t been seen in those offices since he had been removed from his position – he had confided this to me before we entered the building. The policemen greeted their ex-boss with awe. Only one of them came forward to shake his hand though – an overweight forty year old man, with a black goatee and grey hair.
“It’s a pleasure to see you here, Mr Fisichella.” He had a baritone voice that reminded me of Bruson.
“Not sure it’ll be a pleasure for Mr Aronica,” Mr Fisichella replied.
“Aronica isn’t here this morning.”
“Wow, this is my lucky day then!”
The policeman with the goatee laughed.
“Who can I speak to, then?”
“Inspector Benedetti is in. He’s in his office.”
“Thank you, Rizzo. Take care of yourself.” Mr Fisichella said goodbye and invited me to follow him with a tilt of his head.
Mr Benedetti was at his desk, he was focussed on his computer screen. There was another desk in the office – it looked anonymous, with only a few pictures attached to the wall. Nobody was occupying that desk at the moment. The young inspector stared at us with surprise. Then, with a polite tone, he invited us to take a seat.
“Mr Fisichella, would you like to tell us something?”
“Do you know Mr Corsaro, the lawyer?” My policeman friend asked.
The inspector looked at me, then raised his eyebrows and nodded.
“Yes, we’ve met a couple of times… unfortunate times, I’d say.”
“Listen, Mr Benedetti, you’ll have to forgive me. I need to talk to you about Mr Corsaro’s brother.”
“Maybe you should talk to Mr Aronica,” he pulled an irritated face as he said this.
“They told me he’s not here. I’ll be quick.”
“The investigation is closed, I think they’ve sent a request for commitment to trial,” Mr Benedetti objected.
“Yeah, that’s right,” I chipped in.
“That’s quite alright – just be patient and listen to me please.” Mr Fisichella sounded very forceful, authoritative and confident.
The inspector gave in. He leaned his elbows on the desk and placed his chin on his hands.
“Go on.”
“As you already know, I’ve been the leader of this team for a long time. For a few months, you were in my team, before they kicked me out. When did you arrive here?”
“Sixteen months ago.”
“You were lucky. You only had to stand me for a very short time. You know, after so many years on the homicide team, you start to ask yourself questions when you hear certain things. I’ve asked myself a lot of questions regarding Mr Palillo’s murder. For example, how did the killer leave his fingerprints on the weapon and the body but not on the furniture or the papers that were at the crime scene? That’s a real mystery, don’t you think?”
“We’ve already thought about these issues.”
“Yes, of course, you’ve been thinking about a lot of issues… not all of them though. Maybe because you weren’t aware of them. For example, did you know that the man sat next to me was shot at three times? It’s a miracle that he’s alive.”
Mr Benedetti stared at me.
“Talking of Mr Corsaro, did you know that somebody put a bug in his car to spy on him? I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the police…”
“Did you report the facts that you’ve mentioned to the police?” The inspector asked me. Mr Fisichella didn’t give me a chance to reply.
“Just a moment – we’ll get to the report. That’s why we’re here.”
“I’ll call an agent to note everything down, then.”
“Yeah, just let me talk for five minutes first, son. Let me tell you a story. It begins thirty years ago, in Syracuse. There’s this young, ingenuous girl… she’s very beautiful. She lost her mum. Her dad is old-fashioned and controlling but he lets her travel on the bus every day from her village to town. She works in a tobacco shop. There, this young lady meets a lad who’s in the military. The two fancy each other – they’re young, they begin a relationship, you know how it is. She gets pregnant. He doesn’t want to know anything about it and leaves her. Her dad wants to kick her to death, she’s dishonoured his family. They live in a small countryside village, what will people say about them? We’re not too far from Syracuse – there’s an amphitheatre there. Now here’s our deus ex machina – a rich gentleman who wants to have a child. He and his wife, who’s also very rich, were unable to conceive. This rich gentleman convinces the father of the young lady – who works for him – to let her give birth in Switzerland. The gentleman’s wife also accompanies him abroad. When they arrive home they have a beautiful child, a child that isn’t really theirs. But nobody will come to know that. The secret is kept because the clinic where the magic occurred belongs to the brother of the rich lady. The childless young lady and the father then disappear to the north of Italy – they are paid well in exchange for their silence. The transaction is concluded – no refund claims. Business is business.”
Mr Benedetti didn’t say a word. He made a few notes on a notepad every now and again. Mr Fisichella continued.
“Something goes wrong, however. Years later, the natural father of the girl happens to meet her. He immediately notices the resemblance to his girlfriend from many years ago. The father’s name is Onofrio Palillo and he’s a naughty man – he’s a loan shark, a man who always thinks about money. He bumps into the girl – her name’s Grazia Moncada – when she appears at his convenience store. He asks her for some information, he finds out who she is and he does some calculations. He works out that the young lady is his daughter. This fact could be worth an awful lot of money if he plays it right. He decides to rent an apartment one floor above hers. He gets in touch with the father this way – Giorgio Moncada, he’s the rich and powerful businessman. The two talk on the phone a few times. The police don’t notice this when they investigate the murder. That’s okay, I mean, we’re all human after all. I made a lot of mistakes during my career, you know. I believe that Mr Palillo blackmailed Mr Moncada and threatened to reveal the truth about his daughter, this would have been bad publicity. I believe that this blackmail was successful, at least in the beginning. But then something went wrong. Maybe he asked for too much, I don’t know. One day, Mr Palillo talks to a journalist who wants to interview him about the days that he spent as an innocent man in prison. Mr Palillo tells the reporter that he has something else to discuss. He wants to talk rather urgently. What is he referring to? The secret daughter? We’ll never know. We know, however, that a couple of hours after that call, Onofrio Palillo is stabbed thirteen times. Mr Palillo didn’t get the chance to tell Fabrizio Corsaro anything. The murderer takes his life and turns the house upside down. What does he look for? The loan shark’s notebook was found in the apartment, despite it missing a few pages. I believe that the murderer was after something else, maybe a piece of information that could link Mr Palillo to Grazia Moncada. I don’t know if they found it.”
“There were no signs of a forced entry. The victim probably welcomed his killer in. To be honest – and forgive me if I’m being brutal – I’m finding it difficult to follow you. What does the interview with Mr Corsaro have to do with this story?”
“I’ve just told you, inspector. Mr Palillo told Mr Corsaro that he wanted to tell him something else. The murderer must have felt threatened by this. He killed him in a hurry, risking being discovered. The murderer could have killed Mr Palillo somewhere else, he could have planned everything more carefully. Instead he chose to take a risk by killing him that afternoon, when he could have been seen by anybody. You know why he did it? Because he was in a hurry. Because he had to do it before the journalist arrived. Another question thereby arises naturally – how did the murderer know that the journalist was on his way to the apartment? In order to answer that, we should refer to the bug that was found in Mr Corsaro’s car. This man likes to spy on and control people. I believe that the killer followed Mr Palillo’s movements – obviously I can’t prove this – but I think that he’d bugged his house. He overheard Mr Palillo’s conversation with Fabrizio Corsaro and he intervened. Then, after he had killed Mr Palillo, he removed the bug and vanished.”
“Why didn’t you tell us all this before?”
“I needed time, the investigation took a while. You made assumptions. Your dickhead colleague, Aronica, and you… you’re not a dickhead by the way. You’re a good policeman, Mr Benedetti. I still remember the report about you, when they moved you here. I remember wondering why a young, ambitious man like you had left Milan to move down to a hopeless dive like Palermo. Oh, I’m sorry Mr Corsaro, I didn’t mean to offend.”
“That’s okay,” I said, and raised my hand.
“I’m confident with these facts. Now, I’m about to tell you a part of a story that’s more of a blind guess. This story is set in Monza. Do you remember Battisti’s Brianza velenosa? That’s right – that city. That’s where the young mother who sold her daughter lived. You know, those who looked at the surface of this story would condemn her straight away. But I’m more of a detail oriented kind of person. That young lady could have had an abortion, but she chose to honour the child’s right to live. She gave her child the chance of a brighter future, better than any she could have afforded. I don’t know who the real heroes or villains are in this story. I don’t believe in God and I dislike priests, but there’s something that Jesus Christ said that I’ve always liked – do not judge. That’s important, especially for those in our job, Mr Benedetti. Do not judge – we’re not paid to judge anyone. I have always tried to remember this. The young lady remained in Switzerland. They found a job for her in Lugano, at a clinic. She knew a nurse who worked there, but she calls him a ‘doctor’ when she tells the story to a friend of hers. She has the chance to start over again and to leave her terrible story behind. She gets married, she has another child – a son as handsome, sensitive and as attached to his mother as he is unlucky. His dad dies when he’s still young. His grandfather dies in an accident. Eventually, his mother – the person that he loved the most – leaves him, killed by cancer. Maybe you should continue, Mr Corsaro.”
I nodded and cleared my voice.
“Mrs Russo from Monza sends you her best regards, Mr Benedetti. She says that she remembers you fondly.”
Angelo Benedetti stared at me. I’d seen that same expression in the photo that Mrs Russo had shown me.
“How’s Mr Russo? Does he still have hearing problems?”
“He most certainly does – you can hear his TV from Brescia.”
Mr Benedetti smiled and drummed his fingers on the desk.
“What do you guys want?”
“The truth,” I said.
Mr Fisichella took over.
“You see, inspector, I was kind of obsessed with my own interpretation of events and I had to investigate. The afternoon of the murder, Giorgio Moncada was in Rome, his wife was in Ragusa and so was his driver. Grazia Moncada was at the gym – she was seen by dozens of witnesses – and her fiancé was playing tennis. You weren’t on duty. You arrived at the scene out of the blue, when the patrols sent out the alarm. You were the first one to get to the crime scene.”
“I just examined the body, that’s all,” Mr Benedetti said, he didn’t show any signs of agitation.
“Ah, there’s a shopkeeper from Palermo who specializes in espionage equipment. I had a word with him yesterday, he admitted to remembering a blonde, blue-eyed man with a northern accent visiting him towards the end of last year. As well as this, on the day Mr Corsaro miraculously dodged a bullet in Agrigento, you didn’t turn up to work. You called in sick at the last minute. That’s a lot of coincidences, don’t you think?”
Mr Benedetti nodded.
A thin, young policeman entered the room.
“Sciurba, can you do me a favour?” the inspector asked the young policeman.
“Of course.”
“Get me a coffee, please, I’ve been here for two hours.”
“Of course, inspector,” the young policeman replied, and walked out of the office.
Mr Benedetti stared at a point over our shoulders for a moment, as if he was trying to sort his memories. Then he breathed in and began to speak.
“My mother died two years ago. Her illness and her death were very trying for me. I had a nervous breakdown. I was very close to my mother, she was a wonderful woman.”
“When did she tell you about Grazia?” I asked him.
“A little before she died. She hid it from me her whole life. She told me everything one day at the hospital. She feared that I would judge her, that I wouldn’t understand. But I knew who my mother was, I knew how wonderful she was and how much love she was capable of. She told me that I had a sister, she told me her name and where she lived. After a while, she decided to tell me how she had conceived my sister – she told me the name of the father and how he had disappeared when he had learned that she was pregnant. My father had died, my grandfather had died and now she was about to die too. I was alone, completely alone. ‘Take care of her’, my mother said to me. She said this because she knew how lonely I was, she knew that I needed to have a mission in my life so that I could conquer my weaknesses. I kept that promise. I moved to Palermo, I found Grazia and never revealed myself to her. I observed her from a distance – I wanted to be close to her in my own way. That’s how I noticed Mr Palillo. I knew who he was, she didn’t. I was alarmed when he decided to rent an apartment in the same building as her. I began to spy on him. I hid a bug in his apartment, I found out that he blackmailed Mr Moncada. He had already received fifty thousand Euros from him. I knew the type of man he was – I thought about arresting him but I knew that it wouldn’t be enough. In prison, the man could have told anyone the truth. He could have destroyed Grazia’s life. I couldn’t let that happen, I had to protect her.”
“Then you overheard that telephone conversation and decided to act upon it.”
“Yes, to be honest I had already made that decision. There wasn’t any other solution. Mr Palillo had to die. When I overheard the telephone conversation, though, I panicked. I couldn’t use my gun to kill him so I decided to use a knife. I knew Grazia’s weekly commitments and I knew that she wouldn’t be in the building that afternoon. I introduced myself as a policeman and he welcomed me in without hesitation. When he turned round, I killed him. I searched the apartment to find any documents or anything else that could link him to my sister. I didn’t find anything and I was about to pick up the weapon and run out. But then something unexpected happened.”
“Somebody bothered you,” I said.
Mr Benedetti nodded, he looked exhausted.
“This henchman of his… Marchese. I learned about him when I began to spy on Mr Palillo. I heard the loud noise of his moped engine. He stopped outside the building and pressed the buzzer. I panicked. I ran downstairs and left the weapon on the floor and the front door ajar – I hid in a niche underneath the staircase. I was ready to kill him, if necessary. I saw him walk upstairs. He ran back downstairs almost immediately – he almost fell down them. He saw the corpse and chickened away. In this case – no offence – Marchese was wiser than Mr Corsaro. I breathed a sigh of relief and ran away – obviously I didn’t walk back upstairs to get the weapon and close the front door. I had just about enough time to get back home and take off my dirty clothes. I’m sorry for your brother,” he said to me, with an expressionless face. “I never planned to blame it on an innocent person. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The story about his girlfriend’s uncle was extremely convenient. Aronica believed that he had found the murderer and I let him believe it.”
I stared at him incredulously. The young, baby faced man who reminded me of the northern, naïve policeman from Pane amore e fantasia was the same person who had almost killed me.
“You shot at me,” I said to him. My eyes were full of anger.
“I never wanted to kill you. If I’d wanted to, you wouldn’t be here now, trust me. I opened your car to hide a bug in it. It’s an easy job, I’ve done it several times before. When you were on the phone, you mentioned Mr Palillo’s military career. I knew you were getting closer to the truth. I wanted to scare you away. Then I noticed my colleagues outside your apartment and I knew that somebody was keeping an eye on you.”
Mr Fisichella’s guardian angels. They really were angels.
Silence hung over the office for a few seconds. Then, Mr Benedetti relaxed his face and whispered a phrase as he stared down towards the floor.
“I thought nobody would find out.”
“If it helps, I would never have figured it out by myself. My brother Fabrizio’s intuition convinced me. He insisted that it was strange that Mr Palillo, who was definitely rich enough to afford to live on a ranch, had chosen to rent an apartment in that building. The more he told me this, the more I convinced myself that there could be a link between Mr Palillo and the Moncada family. My brother insisted that I go and meet your mother in Monza… that’s how I eventually found out about you.”
At that moment, the young policeman re-entered the office carrying three coffees. We sipped on them slowly and the young policeman sat at the other desk in the office.
“Do you mind if I finish filling in this report? I don’t like leaving things incomplete,” the inspector said.
Mr Fisichella agreed to it and kept a watchful eye on him. My telephone rang. It was Monica.
I stood up and walked to the doorway.
“We’re at the mountain where Giacomo Leopardi wrote the poem Infinito,” my wife said.
“That’s how much I love you – infinito,” I whispered.
Mr Benedetti had stopped typing on the keyboard. He pressed ENTER and the printer on the young policeman’s desk sprang to life.
Mr Benedetti stood up and addressed the young policeman.
“Please give that paper to Mr Fisichella for me.”
Mr Fisichella turned towards the young policeman. It only lasted a few moments – Mr Benedetti grabbed his gun, I shouted his name and saw Mr Fisichella’s expression of terror as he turned to face Mr Benedetti. Then, there was a loud bang from the gun.
Angelo Benedetti dropped to the floor, his head bounced off the corner of his desk. The bullet he fired into his mouth came out on the other side of his skull.