Viper: A Commissario Ricciardi Mystery by Maurizio de Giovanni

Author:Maurizio de Giovanni [Giovanni, Maurizio de]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa Editions UK
Published: 2015-02-09T11:00:00+00:00

XXVII

For Holy Thursday the springtime chose a gray outfit.

The morning dawned misty, with a sickly, pale sun that hardly seemed up to that day’s task. A milky light sketched the outlines of things, plunging them into a fog. The occasional early-morning pedestrians moved along the walls, intimidated by a damp and incomprehensible air: this spring continued to lead people on before brutally disappointing them, pretending to be herself before she really was.

Ricciardi left home half an hour earlier than usual, to be punctual as promised for Viper’s funeral procession. The report from the hospital, which he’d found on his desk the night before upon his return from Vomero, informed him that the corpse had been released to the only person who had claimed it, Signora Lidia Fiorino, also known as Madame Yvonne; therefore everything had gone as expected, and the strange funeral would take place.

If he had requested authorization through proper bureaucratic channels, he’d been well aware, it would have taken days and in all likelihood the request would have ended up stranded on the desk of some sanctimonious functionary who, horrified, would have surely dismissed out of hand the idea of a group of prostitutes parading the streets in the middle of Holy Week. Quite likely, that functionary would have been Garzo himself, in spite of his friendship with the very men who patronized the bordello in question. It’s one thing to keep the place open for business, quite another to allow a young woman who’d been violently murdered to be given decent interment.

There was nothing that disgusted Ricciardi as much as hypocrisy. Even violence, the outburst of rage that led to murder, was part of human nature: masking, concealing, pretending were structures erected in the name of convention, and they were undertaken in the name of personal advantage and convenience. Nothing natural about them.

How much better, therefore, to simply be present to settle any issues that might arise then and there. A commissario of police was a living, breathing authorization. Maione wasn’t wrong, his participation in that unorthodox ceremony was a risk and a potentially serious infraction, in bureaucratic terms; but Ricciardi had glimpsed the ghostly image of the girl, beautiful and dead, standing before a mirror that did not bear her reflection, as she repeated ad infinitum her last, incomprehensible thought. In a certain absurd and inexplicable sense, he knew her: he couldn’t allow her to be buried like some stray animal, nameless, in a mass grave.

As his footsteps echoed over the damp cobblestones of the deserted street, the commissario mulled over the meetings of the previous day. There was something he couldn’t put his finger on, a distinct sensation of disorder; he hadn’t been able to see clearly into that horrible story, his ears had somehow listened badly. Powerful emotions seemed to coalesce around Viper, and one of them had caused the murder: but which? Sometimes the best solution really was the simplest one, and that’s why it wasn’t seen. Murder was such a grave and majestic thing that it rendered the obvious inconceivable.

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