He was of average height, broad-shouldered, with large, gnarled hands, splayed flat on the table. At first sight you’d take him for a bum. Raggedy whiskers, dirty gray hair hanging low over the nape of his neck, a heavy jacket, an oversized sweater from which projected the tattered collar of a shirt that might once have been sky blue, emanating a pungent odor of curdled vomit. His reddened eyes and the broken capillaries on his nose were hallmarks of a binge drinker.
Everything about him bespoke poverty and hard living.
What contrasted with that picture was the erect spine, and even more so, the expression on the face, the calm, proud gaze, almost defiant, the firm jaw and the straight line of the mouth.
Aside from Lojacono himself and two policemen in uniform standing by the door, there were five other people already in the room when he arrived. Piras, who had evidently found time to change out of her stunning outfit into a more sobersided skirt suit; Palma, who in spite of the late hour appeared less rumpled than usual and actually looked as if he were in the throes of some strange euphoria; the police chief, a bald and corpulent man in his early sixties with a perennially irritated demeanor; a man in his early forties, extremely well dressed and with an off-putting manner, introduced to him as Francesco Gerardi, director of the mobile squad; last of all, an old acquaintance, Commissario Di Vincenzo, the man who had kicked Lojacono out of his old precinct, thereby actually doing him an enormous favor: he had in fact been assigned to the San Gaetano police station upon his arrival in the city, and there he had been languishing without any assigned duties.
The lieutenant shot a questioning glance at Palma, who shrugged his shoulders.
It was the police chief who solved the mystery of that presence.
“Commissario Di Vincenzo is here because we’ve summoned him to lend Pizzofalcone a hand in case the investigation now under way proves not to be moving sufficiently expeditiously in the immediate short term.”
“Which is the most likely outcome, I’d have to say,” added Gerardi, immediately staking out his position.
The forces were deployed in fairly unambiguous fashion. Gerardi and Di Vincenzo represented the faction calling for the shutdown of the Pizzofalcone precinct; Laura and, perhaps, the police chief, the side trying to keep it alive.
“It ain’t necessarily so that we need anyone else’s help,” Palma retorted, stung by the insinuation.
The door swung open and Alex came in; her overcoat was buttoned right up to the neck and there wasn’t a trace of makeup on her face. She nodded a greeting and sat down, off to one side.
Palma went on, with greater equanimity now.
“Now we’re all here. Lieutenant Lojacono and Officer Di Nardo are in charge of the investigation, so let me sum up for them. As you may have realized, in part because you’ve surely seen his photographs on the alerts that have been distributed widely in the past few days, the gentleman sitting here is Cosimo Varricchio, the father of the victims in the apartment on Vico Secondo Egiziaca. He turned himself in voluntarily at police headquarters forty-five minutes ago, and he has not yet been questioned.”
Cosimo Varricchio let himself go a little and flashed a contemptuous smile.
“And with all the photographs you circulated, I still walked in on my own two feet. Nice work.”
The head of the mobile squad snapped.
“Varricchio, keep your mouth shut unless you’re asked a question. Keep in mind that your position—”
Varricchio didn’t even bother to look around in his direction.
“My position, my good sir, is the position of a father who came to the police the instant he heard that his two children had been murdered. Or am I wrong?”
His voice sounded like metal scraping across ice. The tone was tranquil and the Calabrian accent was very strong.
The police chief tried to steer the interview back onto the tracks of formal procedure.
“No, Varricchio, you’re not wrong. And before anything else, we’d like to express our condolences for your son and daughter. But you must admit, it’s odd that you should appear out of thin air three days after the murder. And seeing that . . . ”
“ . . . and seeing that I’m Calabrian and an ex-convict, you put me at the top of the list of suspects. Isn’t that right?”
This time it was Di Vincenzo who lost it.
“No, that’s not right at all! You’re a suspect because you vanished the same day as the murder and only surfaced now. It’s absurd to claim that you heard nothing about it before this.”
Piras gave Di Vincenzo a chilly glance; she’d never concealed her strong dislike of the man.
“Di Vincenzo, unless the rules have changed without my knowledge, the interview in these situations is conducted by the investigating magistrate. And unless you can show me otherwise, that magistrate would be me. Therefore, unless you have any pertinent questions to ask, keep your mouth shut or I’ll ask you to leave the room, seeing that you are the one with the least legitimate grounds to be here. Agreed?”
The violent verbal attack surprised all those present, and Palma was unable to conceal a smirk of gratification.
Piras addressed Varricchio.
“Signor Varricchio, my name is Laura Piras, and as you just heard I’m the magistrate supervising the investigation into the murders of your children. Will you explain to us, to the satisfaction of Commissario Di Vincenzo and all the rest of us, just why we only have the good fortune of your visit three full days after the fact?”
“It’s very simple. I got drunk, I went whoring, I slept, I got drunk again, I slept again, and then I finally woke up. And then I went down into the street and I went to get an espresso in a café; there was a television going and I heard about what had happened. I asked directions to get here and I made my fucking way right over.”
Gerardi addressed Piras in mellifluous tones.
“Dottoressa, do we really have to put up with such language? This is—”
Laura waved her hand in his direction, annoyed, as if shooing away a fly.
“Just where did you spend all this time?”
“In a pensione over by the central station. It’s called Da Lucia, I think. The whore took me there. I paid for three days. And I brought the alcohol with me.”
Palma asked Piras for permission to put a question himself, and she agreed.
“Signor Varricchio, can you tell us whether the reason you came to town had anything to do with your children? Whether you met them and, if so, when?”
“I wanted to take Grazia back home and as you can see, she would certainly have been better off if she had come home with me. I went to the apartment where they live . . . where they lived, but she wasn’t there. Only her brother, my son, was there.”
Lojacono shot a glance at Piras and asked: “Can you remember what time that was?”
“The train got in at 5:35 in the afternoon, an hour late, and I went straight over to their house. It took me half an hour, I prefer to walk. So it must have been about six o’clock.”
“How long did you stay?”
The man fell silent, furrowing his brow in thought. Then he answered: “Twenty minutes, maybe. I didn’t check the time.”
Alex studied him. A father, a daughter. Not love, but ownership.
“And what happened during that twenty minutes?” she asked him.
Varricchio turned to look at her.
“I hadn’t seen him in a long, long time. He hadn’t even come to visit his father. You know my story, don’t you? Never once had he come to see me in prison, to look me in the face, never once had he come back to the village since I was released. I wouldn’t have recognized him, if I’d seen him on the street. They say that blood has a voice. Then I must be a little bit deaf, because I never heard it.”
The officer insisted.
“Let me ask you the question again: what happened in the apartment?”
“I told him: you do as you please. You’re clearly ashamed of your father, you studied here, you’ve always done what was best for you. As far as you’ve been concerned, there never was such a thing as your family, so do whatever you like. But your sister is coming home, because that’s where she belongs.”
“And what was his answer?” Lojacono asked.
A leering grin flitted across Varrichio’s face.
“That I’d broken the family by getting myself thrown into jail for killing a man. That I just needed to leave them alone, him and his sister. That Grazia was a good young woman, and she had every right to enjoy a good life. I asked him: just what does a good life mean to you? Being a slut in the city, or going to live with that useless idiot of a singer-songwriter of hers?”
His tone was distant, coldly descriptive. As if he were reading the transcription of a conversation. Piras broke in: “In short, you had an argument and the discussion degenerated from there.”
“Dottore’, I’m his father. It’s not as if I’m going to hold in certain things. I gave him a smack in the face.”
That admission caught everyone off balance.
“So you’re saying you laid your hands on him.”
“I’m saying I gave him a smack in the face. Can’t a father give his son a smack in the face, or has the world turned completely upside down when it comes to that as well?”
The police chief coughed.
“Did he hit you back?”
Varricchio almost burst out laughing.
“Seriously. You actually think that sons can turn around and hit their fathers, nowadays. No, he didn’t hit me back. He said that I needed to leave, that if I didn’t, he’d call you, the police, and he’d have me arrested again, and that that’s exactly where I belong, behind bars. He’d never go back there as long as he lived, and he didn’t want his sister to go back either.”
“What did you do then?”
“I laughed in his face. I asked him: if I refuse to leave, what are you going to do to me? Will you kick me out the door? At that point, he changed his tone. He asked me: Do you understand that your daughter is grown up now, that I’m a grown-up too, and that we’re no longer the children you left behind when they put you behind bars? Then he actually offered me money.”
“Money? What money?” Lojacono asked immediately.
Once again that same leering grin appeared on Varricchio’s face.
“He said that he was going to earn enough to keep his sister like a lady, and even enough to let me live comfortably back home without ever having to work another day in my life. At that point, I looked around at the pigsty they lived in, and I had another laugh and said to him: I see how much money you have, I see how nicely you’re both living.”
Lojacono was utterly focused now.
“Did he say anything else to you about the money? How was he planning to—”
Di Vincenzo, deciding that Piras’s warning to remain silent had expired by now, impatiently addressed the police chief.
“I’ve had enough, Dottore, what’s the purpose of all these questions? Are we or aren’t we interested in understanding whether this man, an ex-convict with a criminal conviction for murder who’s only been out of prison for less than a year, came expressly up here from his hometown to murder these two poor kids? I don’t understand the purpose—”
Piras whipped around on him like a tiger, her upper lip bared to reveal her teeth.
“Di Vincenzo,” she snarled, “I warned you. Get out of this room right now. You have no jurisdiction over this investigation.”
Di Vincenzo turned beet red and stared at the police chief again.
“Dottore, we’re in your office, not in the courthouse, and so, quite frankly, I don’t see why I need to take orders from—”
The police chief leaned back in his chair.
“You’re quite right, Di Vincenzo. So I find myself obliged to order you to do as Dottoressa Piras just requested. Go home, Di Vincenzo. If there’s any need for you to be informed as to the outcome of this interview, I’ll tell you all about it. Buonanotte.”
Di Vincenzo stood up with a taut, lurching motion and, shooting a glare charged with hatred at Lojacono, who didn’t bat an eye, left the room. Palma hoped never to cross paths with him again: that wasn’t a man likely to soon forget or forgive being humiliated.
Piras turned back to Varricchio.
“Answer the question, please. Did your son tell you how he planned to obtain that money?”
Varricchio shook his head.
“He said that he only needed a short time to get it and that it had to do with the work he did. Nonsense. Anyway, I just left.”
Alex was dubious.
“Without any more fighting?”
Varricchio leaned toward her.
“What was I supposed to do, Signori’? Kill him?”
The wisecrack was so macabre that everyone was disconcerted.
That man was devoid of emotions, Palma decided. A man like that could kill his children.
Lojacono was the only one to maintain his composure.
“Listen carefully. I’d like to know how you got into the apartment. Also, when you left, did you meet anyone else?”
The questions astonished just about everyone, including Varricchio, who furrowed his brow, struggling to remember.
“I rang the doorbell and he came downstairs and opened the door for me. He recognized me immediately; just as well because, like I told you, I would never have recognized him. When I left . . . no, I didn’t run into anyone. I slammed the door and left.”
Palma looked at Piras meaningfully: the man had no alibi to ward off suspicion.
The prosecutor nodded and the commissario asked: “Then what did you do?”
Varricchio shrugged.
“I waited downstairs in the street for a while, to see if Grazia would arrive. Then I figured that maybe, slut that she was, she wouldn’t come home at all, and standing out in the street like that was freezing me solid. And so I walked, at random, until I wound up in a bar. I had several drinks and then I went in search of a whore.”
Palma persisted.
“What time did you pick up this prostitute?”
“I couldn’t say. I’d had a lot to drink. I don’t remember.”
A moment of silence, then Alex spoke.
“So you’re saying you just gave up. The first time he said no. You traveled miles and miles, hours and hours, and all your son had to say was no. You could have picked up the phone, you would have saved a lot of time and effort.”
“No, I hadn’t resigned myself. But they weren’t children anymore, Signori’. I’d lost them. The wasted time wasn’t the hours of that trip, it was the sixteen years I spent in prison thinking how nice it was going to be when I finally saw them again. By now they were just a couple of strangers. And I also found out what I had become, in those sixteen years: a useless man. The real shame, Signori’, isn’t the freedom they take away from you, it’s the man that they kill. And I’m a deader man today than that poor soul I beat to death all those years ago, all because of one beer too many.”
“Why didn’t you just go back home, then? Why didn’t you just go and catch the first train out?”
“And what was I supposed to tell the people back home? That not even my own children wanted to see me? At least I could let them think that I’d spent some time with them. That they’d taken me in for a few days. That they’d said: Papà, stay with us for a while, that way we can tell you what we’ve been up to in all these years.”
The police chief ordered the two uniformed officers to take Varricchio to another room. The night was giving way to a chilly dawn.
Piras ran a hand over her tired eyes.
“What do you say? He has no alibi, he has a motive, and he had opportunity. He admits that he was there.”
The police chief nodded.
“What’s more, he’s an ex-convict, with a notorious reputation for out-of-control bursts of rage. Even behind bars, he was involved in a couple of brawls.”
Gerardi, the director of the mobile squad, who had kept his mouth shut up to that point, out of fear of winding up like Di Vincenzo, decided that his time had come.
“In any case, he wasn’t captured as a result of the investigations undertaken by the Pizzofalcone police precinct. That at least should be made clear.”
Palma snapped.
“Let’s not talk nonsense, we were hot on his trail. And as far as that goes, we weren’t likely to find him as long as he was shut up in a pensione over by the central train station.”
Piras came to his aid.
“The commissario has a point. Let’s order his arrest and go on home.”
What Lojacono said next stunned everyone.
“But what if it wasn’t him? Are we going to toss him behind bars on the basis of mere suppositions? Someone whose two children were just murdered?”
Palma stared at him aghast, as if his own dog had just bitten his hand while he was petting it.
“What . . . on earth are you talking about? He has no alibi . . . And did you hear the tone of voice he used? We’re grieving about those kids more than he is! The Dottoressa, too, thinks—”
The lieutenant stood up.
“Everyone reacts to tragedies differently. Maybe it was the trauma that’s causing him to act this way. In any case, boss, I’m not saying he’s innocent, I’m just saying that there are matters that have yet to be looked into. Why would he have killed them? And how would he have done it?”
Piras stared at him, grim-faced. Only now, now that the shuttering of the Pizzofalcone police precinct seemed to have been warded off, he of all people was putting in his two cents.
“What do you mean, how would he have done it? First he killed his son, then he pretended to leave the apartment after the end of the screaming fight, and then waited for the young woman to return home, and murdered her, too.”
Lojacono shook his head.
“I don’t know about that, I’m not certain. It’s just my opinion, nothing more.”
The police chief stood up.
“All right then, let’s all get a few hours of sleep and we’ll all be able to think more clearly. In the meantime, let’s hold him overnight, Laura. Let’s see if he has a lawyer, and if he doesn’t we’ll make sure he has a court-assigned one and then we talk about logistics. We can convene a press conference and announce that we have a suspect. Buonanotte, everyone.”
On their way out, Palma fell into step next to Lojacono.
“I don’t know how the fuck you make certain decisions,” he told him in a hard voice. “Tomorrow morning we’ll have a general meeting in the office and decide on a common plan of action. Common, understood?”
The lieutenant nodded.
And went to his car.