For Ricciardi and Maione, the walk back to police headquarters was a chance to review the scenario suggested by the autopsy findings. Night was starting to fall, but the air gave no sign of cooling. There was almost no one out on the streets; a few families trudged wearily home from the beach.
Maione said: “To be honest, Commissa’, I never believed that a man like Iovine would throw himself out the window. First of all, there wasn’t so much as a goodbye note; and then, what reason would he have had to do it? He had plenty of money, he had risen to the top of his profession, he was married, with a beautiful house, a wife and a son . . . And if the inscription in the second ring means what I think it does, well then he even had a cummarella, a sweetheart on the side. Why on earth would someone like him ever commit suicide?”
Ricciardi was reluctant to agree: “You know better than I do, Raffaele. We’ve seen so many who’ve been given wealth and comfort and taken from it nothing but loneliness and a sense of emptiness. People do lots of stupid things: the professor’s lover, whoever she was, might have been blackmailing him, or perhaps he had some secret vice that was ruining him. In any case, the marks on the body and clothing are unequivocal: someone murdered him.”
Maione was huffing and puffing from the slight uphill climb.
“And it was someone very strong, Commissa’. For that matter, Coviello, the jeweler, told us that he saw someone in the shadows who was immense, in fact he said the man looked like a mountain. This someone picked the professor up and tossed him out the window. And he did it so quickly that the poor professor never even had time to scream, because if he had someone would surely have heard him, since the hospital is full of patients and nurses.”
Ricciardi stopped suddenly: “By the way, did you check to see whether Antonelli remembered that guy . . . what was his name . . . Giuseppe Graziani?”
Maione slapped his forehead: “Oooh, mamma mia, Commissa’, you’re right, I completely forgot to tell you; I was coming to see you when the doctor called. I was right when I thought that name was familiar. Giuseppe Graziani is none other than Peppino the Wolf!”
“Should I recognize that name?”
“No, Commissa’, he hasn’t passed through your hands yet; but if you ask me it’s only a matter of time, guys like him never escape their fate. He’s a guappo, a low-level criminal who’s building his career, he runs the Pendino quarter. We’ve already had a couple of tips about him: he’s expanding his territory. He controls fruit and vegetable shipping, the pushcarts that sell in the streets all around town. Everyone’s afraid of him, according to Antonelli, but he doesn’t know much else about him.”
Ricciardi started walking again.
“That’s one lead. And the threatening letter is another. That makes two. And another thing we need to figure out is just who this Sisinella from the second inscription is: what the goldsmith told us might suggest it’s someone who had power over the professor, if he was in such a rush to have the ring made for her. Experience tells us that where there’s a lover, there’s always danger. Emotions are excellent motives for killing someone or getting yourself killed.”
Maione commented bitterly: “Commissa’, to hear you talk, you’d think a man would have to live blindfolded, gagged, with both hands tied, locked up alone in a windowless room. That way he’ll never suffer for sure.”
He’d barely finished speaking when he caught a fleeting movement out of the corner of his eye: someone had just walked out of the door of an apartment building and slipped into a side street, a narrow vicolo. The brigadier furrowed his brow and said to Ricciardi: “Commissa’, excuse me, would you wait here for a second?”
He took a few steps, leaned out into the small cross street and narrowed his eyes: in the crowd he spotted a blonde head he’d have recognized out of a thousand like it.
He felt a twinge in the pit of his stomach. What was Lucia doing in an apartment house on Via Toledo at that time of day, when she ought to have been home getting dinner ready?
As he turned around, he made a mental note of the building’s street address. He’d have to look into this.
“Something wrong?”
“No, Commissa’, I just thought I saw . . . But I must have been mistaken. You were saying?”
The commissario went on: “I think the time has come to find out a little more about the three situations. First: this Peppino the Wolf. A gangster, but a smart one, it seems to me. I doubt that he’d have done something as foolish as going to the general hospital, which would have been too risky; why not lie in wait for the professor somewhere else? Next, the colleague who sent the letter: he says that he’s sick, actually on his deathbed. How can someone in such a condition find the strength to hurl a man bodily out a window with his bare hands? And then last of all, we need to track down this Sisinella and question her.”
Maione, still distracted, replied: “Maybe not for the sick doctor, because this wouldn’t be his stomping grounds, but for the lover and the Wolf, we can ask around a little.”
They’d reached police headquarters. Ricciardi said: “Now you get home, you’ve been here since this morning. As for the information . . .”
The brigadier sighed: “I know, I know, Commissa’. I’ll have to climb all the way uphill, in this heat, to San Nicola da Tolentino, and walk into that room full of certain perfumes that I don’t even like to tell you about. But a job is a job, isn’t it? Have a good night, Commissa’.”
Ricciardi started up the staircase that led to his office.
At the top of the stairs, Livia was waiting for him.