The Monster of Florence by Magdalen Nabb Page A

look but if he knew the reason he wasn’t saying. “You’re right about it being quicker to walk. You’d get wet, though. Thing is not to get flu, at least not until the strategic moment.”
    “Is there a strategic moment for getting flu?”
    “There will be on this case. You can’t afford to waste flu when you don’t need it. Listen, I’m thinking, we’ve about a month’s reading to do here in three days.” He patted the file on the seat beside him. “When you’ve had a glance through what do you say we get together on it?”
    “That’s a good idea.” Far from getting through a month’s reading in three days, the Marshal felt he was likely to need three months.
    “Good. You’re here. Give me a ring—wait”—he fished out a card—“use my direct number—and I wouldn’t say too much about our getting together. You understand me.”
    “Of course.” The Marshal, who had never said too much about anything in his life, nevertheless realized that the situation wasanomalous. As he watched his friend being driven away under the stone archway he wondered if other secret alliances were being formed among the six men and what it would all lead to. He didn’t feel comfortable about it himself. He didn’t feel comfortable at all.

Three
    “I’m behind a tree so he can’t see me but I can see him. So: he’s standing right there looking into the car—it’s pitch-black, right, and he’s near the car watching them screwing, as close as I am to you now, and he’s got a gun in one hand and a knife in the other. I can see the knife glinting. So, I’m standing there, right, and I see them start getting dressed and I can see everything she’s got, every detail, and he’s standing there, like a statue, he is, and they pull their jeans on but nothing on top and then he shoots. Eight, nine, ten times, he shoots, easy, and then he goes round to the passenger side and starts dragging her out …”
    His voice trailed off, waiting perhaps for the Marshal to contradict or prompt him, or at least to interrupt with a question, but the Marshal remained silent, bulging eyes expressionless, his big hands planted on the desk before him.
    “Anyway … so … he drags her out and away from the car and he rips her jeans off and opens her legs—”
    “Get out,” said the Marshal quietly.
    “Wait! He’s got the knife—”
    “Get out,” repeated the Marshal, and stood up.
    The old man on the other side of the desk was small and fat and the buttons of his check shirt barely met over his stomach. His eyes were rheumy and glittering with the pleasure he’d got out of telling even this much of his story.
    “There’s no call for taking it out on me,” he said, pulling his greenovercoat round him and putting his hat on. “I’m doing my duty telling you, that’s all. You ought to thank me.”
    “Take yourself off home and don’t let me see you in here again or you’ll be sorry.”
    “I’ve done no harm …”
    When the door closed behind him the Marshal went to the window and opened it for a moment, feeling the need for clean air. If this was a foretaste of what life was going to be like once the names of all the investigators were known … Not that it was Bertelli’s first visit. He was forever coming round with his invented stories, but in the first place he habitually buttonholed one of the younger carabinieri—an eighteen-year-old National Service lad—and would get through quite a long tale before the unsuspecting boy would cotton on. In the second place, his stories were undoubtedly lifted more or less straight from the pornographic magazines his tiny restoration workshop was crammed with, but with the sexes reversed. He would be sitting in the bath, having forgotten to lock the front door and the woman from the next flat would just walk straight in and start touching him, etc., etc.
    Now that the newspapers were splashing the Monster again he had no need of his magazine stories. The Marshal