Guido Pagliarino - Personal Terror Political Terror

I was the younger of the two, just sailing along, let’s say, towards sixty-eight, with a birthday the following 1st of August 2001. Like Vittorio I was already receiving a pension, although I had not ceased my activity as a columnist in the daily press. In the distant past, when there were still no faculties of Communication Sciences and even a non-graduate could become a journalist after the usual internship, I had worked at the glorious Gazzetta del Popolo, a Turin newspaper that, after stops and starts in its last decade of life, had ceased publication altogether on December 31, 1983. So I had moved on to another newspaper, La Gazzetta Libera, founded the following year. It had nothing to do with the previous homophonic daily, even though it too had been created as counterpoint in Turin to the immortal La Stampa which, in essence, meant FIAT. Thanks to the subsidies of an economic group that had an interest in it, the new Gazzetta, even though it never reached the same circulation numbers of the previous one, was still viable at the start of the twenty-first century.

Though Vittorio was my only friend, he instead had more than one, even it they were not as close. Evaristo Sordi could also call himself one of Vittorio’s friends despite not having frequented him socially. Years before, he had been his side-kick in the Homicide Section of the Squadra Mobile after I, his predecessor and part-time writer, had tendered my resignation to devote myself entirely to writing. Evaristo had arrived at the highest career level for a non-graduate and was a senior inspector of sUPS (sostituto Ufficiale di Pubblica Sicurezza, meaning deputy Public Security Officer), commonly called "deputy commissioner" and performing those duties. Not much younger than I, and not far off retirement, the man sported an impressive grey mustache for a long time and despite his age still had a lot of hair, which was salt-and-pepper too. He was a robust figure, just like my friend Vittorio who, unlike Evaristo, was not a very tall man. I was the tallest of the three by quite a bit, almost six feet two, and I had always been very thin although, unfortunately, in recent years I had become a little hunched because of my bad habit, common in tall people, of bending down to the many interlocutors of lesser stature, starting with Vittorio himself.

Vittorio had learned of the first crime from the evening news on television and the following morning had read about it calmly in our newspaper, in an article by the chief crime editor Carla Garibaldi, an unmarried colleague in her forties. She was a woman about five feet eight tall and because of the excessive amount of body building which she "carried out daily" as she had told me, had arms and calves, and probably thighs, a little too muscular for my tastes of an old fashioned kind of man. A protruding jaw and a nose which was too small for the shape of her considerably broad face made her quite ugly. On the other hand, she was a person of great culture with a frank and self-effacing character, and I got along well with her, unlike certain entitled brats on our newspaper.

Just as for cases in the past, by way of me, there had been an exchange of information between Vittorio and Carla, and vice versa which all things considered was to her advantage because my friend was usually in possession of first-hand information, given that he often visited Sordi at Police Headquarters. He had already had crucial clues from the retired commissioner in previous cases, so it was not only out of respectful friendliness that she often welcomed Vittorio into her office and, at times, to the crime scenes themselves and listen to his opinions. In the case of the Ear Monster too, she had very willingly kept Vittorio close.

My friend sometimes went to visit another of his former employees, Deputy Commissioner Giandomenico Pumpo who, after a period as Chief Commissioner leading a special department that dealt with magic, esoteric, pseudo-religious and satanic groups, the ACT, Anti Sect Team, sat in the very place that had once been D'Aiazzo’s. Although not as close a friend as Sordi, Pumpo also allowed the old policeman to extract some news out of him now and then which was useful for his parallel investigations.

Chapter 2

The second crime took place five days after Mrs Capuò Tron had been murdered, in October at that point. The victim was Giovanna Peritti Verdani, a 60-year-old widow and pensioner who lived alone in an apartment on Corso Agnelli inherited from her husband. She had a daughter but she was married and lived in Asti. She infact had discovered the body, shortly after 10:00pm of the same day of the murder.

It was her custom to phone her mother every evening, but had not had an answer that time, even though the phone had rung many, many times from 7:30pm onwards; and shortly after 9:00pm the daughter, very worried knowing that her mother never went out after dark, had jumped in the car and had come to Turin. Arriving about an hour later in front of her mother's building and after buzzing uselessly on the intercom, she had let herself in with the spare key she had with her, had gone upstairs and opened her mother’s apartment, which was closed with only a half turn of the lock, as she would later tell the police.

After turning on the light, she had made the gruesome discovery of her mother lying dead on the floor in the entry hall, with her mouth gaping in a grimace of pain, her eyes wide open, blood and brain matter spilling from one ear and a large hematoma on her head.

It would be established that the bruising had been caused by a heavy domestic vase being dropped onto the head, and on which the anatomo-pathologist would find traces of the victim's scalp. The doctor would also determine that, in all certainty, death was due to an ice pick pushed into the ear until it pierced the brain.

The dead woman’s daughter, who barely had time to drop onto a chair, had fainted. When she came to her senses around 10:10pm as she had ascertained on her wristwatch, she had managed to call 113 even though she was still in shock.

Around 11:00pm I had phoned Vittorio on my mobile phone to let him know about the new murder, fulfilling his request to inform him of any developments which might have arrived at the newpaper. Carla Garibaldi had told me about the new crime when I went past her computer station on the way to my desk. She had just had a phonecall from a colleague who, as a rule, hung out in the atrium of the Police Headquarters in the evening and into the early hours of the night, along with colleagues from the city’d other newspaper and the television stations, waiting for crime news. Carla's deputy had then rushed to the scene of the crime with the others, to give his boss any news.

Vittorio had Evaristo Sordi’s cell phone number, and had learned from him that he was at the scene of the crime. He said that the body had not yet been removed, pending the imminent arrival and authorization of the Public Prosecutor Trentinotti for transfer to the morgue for the necroscopy. Sordi had given my friend permission to enter the dead woman's apartment by mingling with the journalists.

He had never had a drivrer’s license and travelled thriftily around the city by tram, but given the hour and the urgency, he had taken a taxi that time. It had been a waste of time and money, though, as he had arrived on the landing outside the dead woman’s apartment when not just the journalists, including Carla's deputy, had moved on, but the coroner, the magistrate and the commissioner had left too. The commissioner had taken the deceased woman’s daughter with him in the service car to officially take down and record her testimony at Police Headquarters. The body was already en route to the morgue. The only people still there were two officers who were putting seals on the door and their deputy superintendent. Knowing D'Aiazzo, he had greeted him cordially; perhaps he should not have done so, but he had also offered to take him to Police Headquarters in his patrol car, an offer which he was not about to refuse, considering that it was close to his home and quite late.