Kill the King Read online

  Hello, my name is Tommy and I’m autistic. I don’t like to talk or be touched. If you find me unaccompanied, please call this number.

  Colomba cursed herself for the idiot she was. “Ciao, Tommy. Pleased to meet you … Sorry I didn’t understand before this.” She turned the bracelet over and found the same message in Greek. Lots of foreigners had purchased little villas on the hills of the Marche, so much more affordable than the houses in the neighboring region of Tuscany. No doubt Tommy’s parents were among their number. There was also a useless—for now—telephone number and a home address, a street in Montenigro about an hour’s walk away, under normal conditions. In slippers? In the snow? Hard to say how long it would take.

  “How did you get all the way over here? Were you with someone who hurt themselves?” Colomba asked, and as before received no answer. She sat down on the other end of the sofa, feeling exhausted as if the hour she’d just spent had lasted an entire day. She felt an overwhelming desire to get back in bed.

  But she had Tommy to deal with. And his bracelet.

  “I should have just let you run away,” she told him. “Now you’d be somebody else’s problem.”

  She put her parka back on and went out to start the old Fiat Panda 4x4. She hadn’t used it since she’d last gone out for groceries three weeks earlier, but as soon as she hooked the emergency charger up to the car battery, the starter turned over and the engine roared to life.

  As she waited for it to warm up, Colomba applied the snow chains she’d extracted from the car’s trunk, freezing her fingers to the bone and cursing under her breath as she did so. Every so often she’d walk over to take a look at Tommy, who still sat hunched over on the sofa. He’d taken off his blanket and seemed indifferent to the icy temperature. Colomba vaguely recalled that indifference to the cold was one of the symptoms of autism. Dante had told her so.

  Once she’d gotten the snow chains onto the tires, Colomba dragged Tommy into the car, tethering him in place with two seat belts in the back seat, and then crept up the driveway, with the engine grinding along in first gear.

  Her hands were sweating. She passed the house of her first neighbor, so to speak, a good mile and a half away, a peaceful man who lived alone—a beekeeper—and then she reached the intersection with the provincial road. There were no other cars out, and she felt lost on an alien planet made of ice. Her breathing faltered, growing labored, and a cramp in her stomach made a sheet of icy sweat break out all over her body.

  She pulled the hand brake and got out. Standing in the snow, she forced herself to breathe calmly, staring at a bright blue break in the cloud cover.

  It’s just a few miles. Nothing will happen, she told herself. But something, she knew, already had.

  5

  Tommy tapped on the glass of the car window, and Colomba snapped back to full consciousness.

  “Okay, okay, I get it,” she said. Tommy wouldn’t stop and was going to keep tapping the rest of the way. Colomba took another couple of deep ice-cold breaths, then got back behind the wheel. The provincial road had only a thin layer of snow on it, and her snow chains on the asphalt sounded like machine guns. At the turnoff for Montenigro, she found herself looking at a Carabinieri checkpoint, two squad cars on either side of the road and uniformed soldiers with submachine guns and their faces bright red with the cold.

  She slammed the brakes on. From the back seat, Tommy let out a shrill shriek and lay down, out of sight.

  Colomba turned to look at him. “There’s no need to be afraid, Tommy. There must have been a car crash,” she told him, knowing how unlikely that actually was. “Now, you wait here for me, all right?” She shut the door, leaving the boy in the car, and walked over to the small cluster of Carabinieri. One of them was a young woman with a head of red curls, who was directing the nonexistent traffic with a paddle.

  “Signora, you’re going to have to turn around. The road is closed.”

  Colomba read her insignia. “Good morning, Corporal. What seems to be going on?”

  “Routine police work, ma’am,” said the redhead, in the tone of voice that amounted to None of your fucking business. “You’d better go the long way round.”

  “Maybe you can help me. I found a boy who’s lost. His name is Tommy Melas. He’s autistic and needs to get back to his parents as soon as possible.”

  “Wait here.” The corporal hurried away and a few minutes later she was back, with a tall bald man in his early fifties, his chin trimmed with a small neat gray goatee. He was dressed in a well-worn hunter’s suit, but there was no mistaking the fact that he, too, was in the military. The man hesitated a tenth of a second before extending his hand, and Colomba realized that he’d recognized her. “I’m Sergeant Major Lupo, commander of the Portico station.”

  “I’m Colomba Caselli, but you already knew that.”

  “Where is your security detail, Deputy Chief?”

  “I don’t have one,” she said in a hurry. “Listen, the boy walked all the way to my house, he’s just lucky he didn’t freeze to death, but he ought to be seen by a doctor.”

  “Your house in …”

  “In Mezzanotte. I shut him up in the car because I’m afraid he’s going to hurt himself, but also because his clothing is covered in blood. Drenched in it.”

  Colomba pointed to him. Inside the car, Tommy continued to tap on the window at the same rhythm, indifferent to everything else.

  Lupo ran his hand over his whiskers unhappily. “Listen, Deputy Captain, I’ll get straight to the point. Tommy’s parents were murdered last night.”

  “Oh, Christ …” said Colomba.

  “We received the call two hours ago, and we’ve just put out the alert for the boy. Thanks for having spared us a lot of grueling work.”

  “It was pure coincidence.”

  “Do you mind waiting for me at the café while I get the boy situated?” he asked, pointing her to the establishment just before the curve in the road. It was an old tobacconist that also served as a milk bar, as was often the case in small towns. “Have an espresso and put it on my tab.”

  “I’m going to guess that I don’t really have an alternative.”

  “I think you know so, even better than I do.”

  Colomba knew it perfectly well and she did as she’d been told, though she ordered a cup of tea with lemon instead of an espresso. She sat down at the only table, next to the little plate-glass window. In the café there were three old men, discussing what was going on, while the Asian barista was texting on her cell phone.

  She saw Tommy appear at the far end of the road, surrounded by Carabinieri who were gently herding him along. The boy managed to bolt from the little group by knocking the redheaded corporal to the pavement, but instead of running away, he simply galloped straight for the ambulance and lunged inside. From where she sat, Colomba couldn’t see anything more until Lupo came out with a large bag containing the boy’s clothing. She looked back down into her teacup.

  Lupo arrived ten minutes later and sat down beside her. “The boy seems in reasonable shape,” he told her.

  “Does he have any relatives around here?”

  “Not that we know of. Right now we’re taking him to a farmstay in Cartoceto until we can find a better place to put him up.” He ordered an espresso, and the barista prepared it for him without once taking her eyes off the screen of her cell phone. “He’s legally an adult, but he certainly can’t be left all alone.”

  Colomba thought back to the boy’s frightened eyes and tried to picture him in one of the old converted farmhouses that dotted the countryside, full of vacationers during the summer months but by now surely empty and alone. She felt sorry for him, a feeling that lately she’d largely reserved for herself. “He was home when the murders took place, I’d have to imagine.”

  “I imagine the same thing. And he ran away in his slippers. Did he tell you anything when you found him?”

  “No, not even his name. I’m not even sure he knows how to talk.�
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  “Had you ever met before? Did you know his parents?”

  “No.”

  “Neither did I, we didn’t see them out and about much.” Lupo put on a pair of half-rim reading glasses and undid his jacket. Underneath it he wore a sweater decorated with embroidered sombreros and burros; he pulled a sheet of paper out of an inside pocket. “The mother’s name was Teresa, she came from Turin. The stepfather’s name was Aristides, and he was Greek,” he said, skimming his notes. “Tommy is actually the mother’s son from her first marriage. His last name is Carabba. His real father died when he was five or six years old. Now he’s nineteen.”

  Colomba raised her right hand. “Thanks for all that. But it’s none of my concern.”

  “Maybe, a little bit, it actually is.” Lupo fooled around with an early-model iPhone before handing it to her. “This is Tommy’s bedroom, the way we found it today.”

  All she could see of the bedroom was the headboard of the bed and a wall covered with photographs. Colomba pinched the picture to enlarge it and discovered that the pictures on the wall were all of the same person.

  Her.

  6

  Colomba handed back the cell phone without a word. Even here, she thought. She chewed on the lemon that had been rinsed in the tea, with an even grimmer look on her face. She’d been hoping that she’d left her compulsive admirers behind her. Lupo studied her expression. “You don’t seem very surprised, Deputy Captain.”

  “After the bloodbath in Venice, my face has become public property. And then there are all those fans of Dante’s who think that I was the one who made him disappear.”

  “Yeah, I think I’ve read something about that. The world is full of idiots.”

  “According to Dante, seventy percent of the population. And a hundred percent of the men and women in uniform,” she added with a sad smile.

  Lupo grimaced sympathetically. “He must have been a lot of fun to be around, this Torre.”

  “He still is,” Colomba snapped. Then, more calmly: “I don’t know where he is, but he’s alive.”

  “Certainly, sorry about that.” Lupo smiled consolingly at her. “According to the neighbors, Tommy almost never talks, but when he wants to, he’s capable of expressing himself more or less like a child.”

  “You need a specialist. I knew a few people in Rome, but here I wouldn’t know who to point you to.”

  Lupo smiled apologetically. “While we’re trying to figure that out, what do you say to giving it a try yourself?”

  “My job was to bring him to someone who could take care of him, and that’s what I’ve done. And that’s where my duty ends.”

  “The boy admires you. Maybe he’d be willing to talk to you, and any additional information we can get would be a big help.”

  Colomba clenched the cup a little tighter. “Even if Tommy told me something, it wouldn’t have any legal value. If he’s as seriously autistic as he seems, he has no juridical capacity.”

  “But he could help us identify whoever was responsible for the murders. And now that you’re no longer on the force, you don’t need authorization to talk to Tommy, the way I would.”

  Colomba thought back to the pictures covering the wall. She sighed. “Have the SIS already examined the crime scene?” The SIS was the standard abbreviation for Scientific Investigation Squad, the unit in charge of crime-scene forensics.

  “No. And I don’t know when they’ll get here, in this weather.”

  “Then I’d like to take a look at the house before talking to the boy,” she said, hoping that Lupo would refuse so that she could take that thought off her mind.

  Unfortunately, that’s not the way things went.

  7

  Colomba followed Lupo, entering the center of Montenigro for the first time since she’d been a child. Now many of the houses in the little village that dated back to Romanesque times stood abandoned and in ruins. For the most part, it was inhabited only by old people who rounded out their pensions by hunting for truffles, and now the old folks were all out in the street, eagerly watching in spite of the risk of freezing to death. There were even a few new houses, the kind you’d find on the outskirts of Milan. The Melas home was one of these: ochre yellow with a large veranda propped up by garish fake-marble columns.

  A small knot of soldiers were stamping their feet to keep warm behind the two-toned tape that was blocking access. An elderly brigadier let them through, and Colomba instinctively reached into her pocket to flash her police badge. Of course, it was no longer there. On her last day in Rome she’d hurled it against the wall of the squad room, coming dangerously close to hitting the chief of the Mobile Squad in the head. Maybe they’d melted it down, or crushed it in a hydraulic press. She had no idea what they did with the badges of officers out on extended leave.

  They put on latex gloves and shoe covers, taking them out of a cardboard box on the front steps. “Any signs of breaking and entering?” she asked.

  Lupo shook his head. “I haven’t seen any.”

  The snow had started falling again, thick and fast; the rain gutters were gurgling and the windows were so many blind, luminous eyes. They passed a front hall filled with shoes and umbrellas and entered the villa’s kitchen. Colomba saw a bottle of mineral water overturned in the sink, with an almost complete print of a bloody hand. There were more handprints on the refrigerator, and on the floor was an array of bare, bloodstained footprints. Colomba felt sure they belonged to the boy.

  “What a mess,” she muttered.

  “Yes, Tommy made quite a mess. The fingerprints are his, we checked it out on the fly while we were changing him.”

  Colomba followed the crimson fingerprints down a hallway whose walls were covered with photographs of birds of prey, and then into the living room. On the main wall hung the wedding pictures of Signor and Signora Melas. Signora Melas was projecting a virtual fountain of uncontainable joy in her white wedding gown, too tight around her stout hips, while Signor Melas stood, lithe and athletic in his black suit, smiling into the lens.

  Lupo removed a sheet of paper from the breast pocket of his shirt and put his glasses back on. “They got married a year and a half ago, according to their residence permits. But we just took a quick look at the system, there was no time to do any more searching than that.” He used his elbow to shove open the door into the master bedroom.

  “They were killed in here, and it’s not a pretty sight,” he said. “You can spare yourself the experience, if you prefer.”

  “I’m sure I’ve seen worse,” said Colomba.

  She was right, but the scene was still quite repugnant. The bodies of the Melases, man and wife, looked as if they’d wound up under a truck, if the driver had then put the truck in reverse and run over them again a couple more times for good measure. They lay in their blood-drenched bed, he on his side, his legs tangled in the covers, a hand half-detached from the wrist, and she on her back. The woman’s right leg had slid to the floor, as if it had been nailed down while she was trying to escape, the bone of the tibia protruding from the flesh. The blows had been so violent that his red-striped pajamas and her lace-trimmed nightgown were in shreds. Colomba decided that the mortal blows must have been to the head. The back of the man’s skull had been flattened, his scalp shoved forward until it sloughed over onto his forehead; the woman’s head, in contrast, ended above the eyebrows, where there was nothing but a slosh of gray matter and hair. Colomba felt the taste of the lemon rising up from her stomach. “Did you find the weapon?”

  “Not yet. What do you think it could have been?”

  “From the indentations, probably a hammer, and a heavy carpenter’s hammer, for that matter, with a square face. A big one, too.”

  “And how many assailants do you think there might have been?”

  “I’m not a ‘white jumpsuit,’ ” Colomba replied in a flat tone, using the jocular nickname for members of the forensics squad.

  “But you were on the homicide squad, you must ha
ve seen more things than I have.”

  “I can make some educated guesses, such as that the blows were delivered with a single weapon, used in alternation between the two victims.” Colomba pointed at the ceiling. There were arcs of blood that intersected like the beams in a barrel-vault ceiling. “… The vertical swipes were produced by the murderer when he raised the weapon after inflicting the blow. While the horizontal swipes were—”

  “—when he changed targets. Back and forth,” Lupo said, proving that he knew more than he was saying. “So there might have been just one attacker.”

  “There could have been ten, if they’d just handed the weapon from one to the other and were careful to maintain the same angle of attack.”

  “But you have to admit that that’s unlikely.”

  Colomba hesitated, undecided about what answer to give. She didn’t like Lupo’s persistent stance. “Let’s get out of here.”

  They went back to the living room, under the eyes of the photos of the murdered couple. Colomba could imagine the pictures on their headstones, not too far in the future.

  “Do you think it was a robbery?” asked Lupo.

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “I’m usually called upon to investigate calf rustlers and quarreling neighbors,” said Lupo, with a shrug. “My opinion isn’t worth a plugged nickel.”

  “I’ve seen experienced officers lose their lunch at the sight of corpses in these conditions. You seem quite at your ease.”

  “Sometimes cattle thefts can go horribly wrong.”

  Colomba shook her head: if Lupo wanted to go on playing the ignorant rube, that wasn’t her problem.

  “A robber will kill out of fear, to keep from being identified, or as a punishment for victims who’ve refused to go along. The Melases, in contrast, were murdered in their sleep, or just about.”

  “And considering that a hammer isn’t the kind of murder weapon we’d expect from a hardened criminal, what are we supposed to think? That this was a crime of opportunity? A crime of passion?”