Blood Curse

XVII

Off to one side, Ricciardi watched the minuet that always took place in the wake of a murder. The stage setting varied, but the cast of characters was more or less the same: the medical examiner, a photographer, a couple of police officers, Maione, himself: each with a score and choreography all his own, treading carefully to avoid incursions into the others’ territory, just trying to see his own work through to completion. Talking, commenting, sometimes even laughing: a job like any other.

Outside the door, behind the police officer responsible for isolating the crime scene, morbidly curious eyes scanned the front hall for details that could be exaggerated in the neighborhood tall tales that would enliven conversations between next-door neighbors, friends, and relatives in the days to come. The same old story. Every time.

Ricciardi distinguished between murders with evident motives and murders whose motives were concealed. The former type had all the evidence right in the first scene, visible at first glance: the man with a gun in his hand sprawled out on top of the woman’s body, their faces disfigured by point-blank bullet wounds. The man splattered across the sidewalk, and up on the fourth floor the other man telling him to get up and take the rest of what he’s got coming. The guappo lying on the ground, with the knife protruding from his jacket like the handle of an umbrella clamped under his arm, and the other man, being restrained by four bystanders, still spitting out all the hatred he feels for him. Unmistakable motive. No doubt at all; all that’s left to take care of is a bit of cleaning and a small mountain of reports.

Concealed motive: the tenor found in his dressing room with his throat slit and a whole slew of people with excellent reasons for wanting him dead. The whore with her belly ripped open by a knife that’s vanished into thin air, in a bedroom that dozens of people pass through over the course of a single day. The rich gentleman killed in a crowd during a neighborhood street celebration, and no one saw a thing.

A poor, harmless old woman, mused the commissario, a “saint,” beloved by one and all, and then brutally clubbed and kicked to death: he had an unpleasant feeling that it wasn’t going to be easy to get to the bottom of this murder, to find the motive.

Maione summoned Riccardi’s attention; he was squatting down close to the carpet, being careful not to move or touch anything. Given his size, in that position he looked like an alabaster Buddha, which for some reason was dressed as a Neapolitan policeman.

“Look right here, Commissa’: somebody stepped in the blood. You can see the footprints.”

Ricciardi came over and looked carefully. Maione was right: he made out at least two footprints. One was broad and heavy, the other was fainter. A third footprint, farther back, broad and smeared. Maione went on, pointing to this last one.

“That’s the foot that the bastard who kicked her rested his weight on. And he slipped on the blood, twice, see?” pointing to another spot in the blackish puddle.

“Here, on the other hand, and again right here, it’s as if someone walked up on tiptoe. And neither the porter nor her daughter had any blood on their shoes; I checked myself. What did this guy do, dance a ballet?”

Ricciardi thought it over.

“They could have been made at different times. Someone who came in later, when the victim was already dead.”

“Huh, what a lot of hustle and bustle. . what is this, the central train station? And when would all this have happened, anyway, given that they saw her retire for bed last night and they found her dead at nine thirty this morning?”

From the bedroom came the voice of Cesarano, the other police officer.

“Commissario, Brigadier, come here!”

The policeman was standing next to the chest of drawers, holding a notebook in his hand. It was a school composition book, with a black cover and red deckle edges on the sheets. Ricciardi took it in his hand.

“It was here, under the sheets.”

On every sheet in the notebook there was a number, possibly a date. A list of names, with numbers next to them, almost like a schedule. Also next to the names, in wobbly handwriting and large, slanting letters, were a number of ungrammatical words. Ricciardi read at random:

“9 Polverino, male, yung lover, not much money

10 Ascione

11 Imparato, femail, dead fatther, lots of money

12 Del Giudice, femail, husband beets her

14 La Cava, man, detts to be payd, no money, sausidge-maker

15 Pollio

17 S. di A., meet man of her dreems

18 Cozzolino, femail, poor boy frend, rich old man wants her. Ask for a lott.”

Ricciardi looked over at Maione with a half-smile on his face.

“Good old Cesarano here found the book in which the saint wrote her customers’ futures. Rates included. Let’s go in the other room and see what the doctor has to tell us.”

As they walked toward him, Modo looked at them and shook his head.

“She was definitely already dead after the first blow. Look right here: skull shattered, brain reduced to a pudding. I’ll be able to tell you more once we get her to the hospital, but if you ask me, it shouldn’t even have taken this much force. Osteoporosis had made her bones thin and brittle; even a good hard slap could have killed her. Why on earth are people such monsters?”

Ricciardi said nothing. He went on looking at the bundle of rags, which Modo had straightened as if it were a marionette, a small, roughly dressed mannequin, an old tattered doll.

Maione looked on, frowning slightly, as if he had been personally insulted.

“And after that? What happened after the first blow?”

“More of them followed: at least three, on the head, with the same blunt object, possibly a walking stick, an umbrella, I don’t know. Then, as you’ve seen for yourself, they started kicking her around the room. She has several fractured ribs, possibly a broken spinal column-I don’t know yet, I’ll have to look into it. They really let her have it. I don’t know how many of them there were. I’ll have to determine whether the marks on her body are uniform. I need to take her to the hospital with me. I’ll tell you tomorrow night.”

“You’ll tell me tomorrow morning. I know you. You’re a bloodhound.”

“I can’t get it done by tomorrow morning!” the doctor objected. “I’m not some kind of superman! I need to get at least a little sleep; and if I want to get to sleep after a day like this, I’ll need to get drunk, too. These are things that require time.”

“Go on and protest, protest all you like; you’ll pull it off all the same. You know all too well that the first twenty-four hours are the most crucial.”

“If I’m ever reborn, I’m coming back as a policeman. That way I can bully doctors around, too. . all right, all right, I’ll do what I can. Have her brought to the hospital; I’ll go in myself in a couple of hours, and then we’ll see.”

Still grumbling, Doctor Modo left without saying good-bye to anyone. Maione touched his fingertips to the visor of his cap, and the police officers saluted. Ricciardi smiled wearily and said nothing. He turned toward the image with the broken neck, and she said to him: “’O Padreterno nun è mercante ca pava ’o sabbato.” God Almighty’s not a shopkeeper who pays His debts on Saturday. And as she said it she made a little gesture that he hadn’t noticed before, a movement of the arm, as if she were moving something.

Ricciardi turned to look at the corpse and tried to reckon its location, before it was moved by Doctor Modo and even before the woman’s attackers began kicking it. And he found himself staring at one side of the carpet, the one a bit farther away from the table and near the dismal old sofa.

He knelt down and scrutinized the floor: under the sofa there was a biscuit tin. He reached out his hand and carefully pulled it toward him; the lid was half-open. The words “Le Marie” were written on top. Maione walked over to him and looked him briefly in the eyes. Using his handkerchief, he opened the tin completely. It was full to the top.

Cash and promissory notes, all covered with caked blood.