Their observation point was under the arbour, which rested against the roof of a tiny ramshackle house, like those you found in magazines for little children. Around the house and the arbour there were trees with bright, tiny leaves that created an ideal barrier, because from the outside you couldn’t see anything and from inside you could see everything. Inside the house there was a fat young man sleeping with his head propped on the table. They had given him five thousand lire and this had relaxed him completely and had removed any curiosity he might have had. There was a side road, about a hundred metres long, joining the little house to the main road, the Giulietta was parked with its front towards the main road, in the shelter of the trees, and they were leaning on the trunk of the Giulietta in the relatively cool shade, watching.
‘Has she gone in?’ Davide asked.
‘Yes.’ Duca handed him the telescope. But now there was nothing to be seen except the sky-grey tower in the green sea of fields and, in the background, Milan in the summer haze. It would have made a nice picture postcard, photographed from here, they could have offered it to the owners of the Ulisse Apartments.
A lorry passed, a moped passed, then nothing: the desert. Then Davide said, ‘I think someone is about to stop outside the building.’
‘What?’ But he had already seen it: a Mercedes 230 had appeared from the end of the street and was now slowing down in front of the building then entering the scorching concrete parking area and very slowly parking between the white lines.
Davide was still looking through the telescope. ‘I’ve seen that car before, the same model, the same colour, it must be the same, there aren’t many Mercedes 230s around and it’s unusual for two of them to have the same colour.’
‘Where did you see it?’ Now a man was slowly getting out, he looked young, though rather large, and seemed to be in absolutely no hurry.
Davide’s voice was anxious. ‘Last year, that day with Alberta.’
‘Give me the telescope.’ He looked through it at the young man, and saw him as if he was only about five metres away. To many he might have seemed the model of the good son, but to Duca, a doctor and psychologist despite everything, he didn’t. That was the worst kind of criminal face there was, the kind that didn’t arouse suspicion.
‘On the autostrada, I saw it a couple of times before we got to Somaglia, then when I came back towards Milan and Alberta was crying, it was still behind us. At Metanopoli I overtook it and it seemed as if it was going to stop.’ Even after a year, the memory was still vivid, everything connected with Alberta was vivid in his mind. He now realised what that car had meant, a year earlier, and what it meant now.
Duca, too, had understood. ‘He really looks like a killer,’ he said, putting the telescope down on the trunk of the Giulietta. There was nothing else to see, the killer had entered the building, the Mercedes was baking in the sun.
‘What should we do?’ Davide asked, he seemed to have turned green, but it wasn’t because of the reflection of the leaves in the arbour.
There was almost nothing they could do. Everything was clear. The distinguished-looking gentleman with the grey moustache seduced restless girls from the city, someone professional photographed them, and this man in the Mercedes kept an eye on them and punished those who rebelled or tried to get away or had the idea of betraying them. In addition, the photographs were hot. For a photograph, these people were prepared to kill one, two, ten women.
‘We have to go in there now,’ Davide said.
Yes, of course, they had to get going immediately: the man who had overpowered Alberta and slashed her wrists, who had taken Maurilia to Rome and drowned her in the Tiber, would also kill Livia Ussaro at the slightest suspicion.
‘We have to stay here,’ Duca said. He had the feeling he was also becoming green, at least the skin of his face felt as if it must be green.
‘But that’s the man who killed Alberta, he was following us the whole time.’
‘Yes, that’s him. But if we go in now, once we’ve knocked down the front door of the building and then the door of the apartment, he can kill Livia if he wants to, he has all the time in the world.’ It was a simple and unfortunate situation, he explained, the only hope was that the man didn’t suspect Livia, that he allowed her to pose for the photographs and then let her go, one of the many girls who must have passed that way. And there was no reason for him to suspect her: Livia hadn’t met anyone after seeing Signor A, she had done nothing suspicious, she had left home and had come here to pose for photographs. Livia was clever, she knew what to do. Besides, if these people had had the slightest suspicion, they wouldn’t even have got this far and stepped into a trap, they would have simply disappeared. They were on the lookout, but they didn’t suspect. If they went up there to save Livia, they would simply kill her, because they would be revealing who she was. The best way to save her was to stay here, and wait for her to come out.
‘And what if she doesn’t come out?’
Young Davide’s anxiety was making him nervous, he at least was hiding his own. ‘They can’t stay in there forever. Either they don’t suspect anything, they photograph her and then let her go, or else they discover something and they’ll try to escape.’
‘And Livia?’
Enough now, he was also thinking of Livia, or maybe he was praying, rather than thinking. He didn’t reply.
There are sixty minutes in an hour and they were passing one by one. The young man asleep in the little house from the kids’ magazine woke up at the sound of a tractor passing on the main road, looked at the world outside, the Giulietta and the two men who were part of that world, then must have remembered the five thousand lire and lit a cigarette and probably started to think about the way he would spend it. It was no later than 2:25, it was just a matter of knowing how long it took a photographer to expose a complete roll of Minox film. He had no idea, it depended partly on the model, but he assumed it couldn’t be less than half an hour.
Davide knew he shouldn’t speak, but there was a limit. ‘We can’t just stay here and wait.’
‘No,’ Duca said, looking at his watch, almost exactly half an hour had passed since Livia had got out of the taxi. ‘No, that’s exactly what we have to do.’
And then something happened. They saw two men come out of the Ulisse Apartments and one of the two was the man from the Mercedes, who now seemed to be in a bit of a hurry, he was nowhere near as relaxed as he had been before, and, for not more than a thousandth of a second, they waited to see Livia, too, come out of that Aztec temple, but the two men were alone and had almost reached the Mercedes, and it really looked as if they were making a quick getaway.
‘Try to cut them off,’ he said to Davide. They had the disadvantage that they were nearly three hundred metres from the building, but the advantage that their car was ready, with its doors open, and they didn’t have to do anything but start the engine. The other men were only now opening the doors of their car.
And in the time that took them, Davide set off, ate up the path, swallowed the two hundred metres of main road that separated them and aimed straight at the front of the Mercedes, practically determined to crash into it.
The Mercedes set off furiously: the road to Milan was near, and there they’d be able to lose themselves in the traffic. They rushed onto the main road towards Melzo, while Davide lost a few seconds reversing in order to point the car in the right direction. The man at the wheel of the Mercedes seemed to be very confident of the almost empty road, he still had three hundred metres advantage, he was moving straight ahead like a plane, and Duca then said something stupid to Davide: ‘Even if we don’t catch them, don’t worry, we’ll catch them later.’
‘I’ve already got them,’ Davide said. He was more than confident, he was blind with fury; as if the car ahead of them was a moped, he was suddenly on top of it, another second and he would overtake it.