Personal Terror Political Terror

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

A third murder, two days after the conversation between Evaristo and Vittorio, had confirmed the suspicion that it was a homicidal maniac, and the media and therefore the public had now dubbed him The Ear Monster.

The victim, 55-year-old housewife Margherita Piccozza Ferini, was the wife of a senior bank employee. This couple too, like the first crime, had no children. They lived in an apartment which they owned in a building in Lungo Dora Voghera. The husband of the slain woman had made the gruesome discovery when he came home from work around 6:00pm and he had alerted 113. The corpse had a noticeable hematoma on the head, like in the second case; this time, however, the blunt instrument had not been found, so the killer must have taken it away with him: the coroner would establish that it was a hammer.

Shortly after 7:00pm, after a quick dinner, Vittorio had gone out to the cinema and had not seen the news on television as he usually did. He had not even watched the late night news when he returned, because he had immediately gone to bed to read a book until he fell sleep. He had therefore only heard about the crime the following morning, from an article by Carla Garibaldi that reported the details.

My friend had phoned Evaristo who was happy to receive him in his office this time too.

The Commissioner had said to him: "Unfortunately for the victim, a German Shepherd dog that the couple kept to guard their apartment and also for personal defense, actually died yesterday morning not many hours before Mrs Ferini's death which took place, according to the coroner’s initial findings, between 3:00pm and 5:00pm. As the widower told us, the animal's body had been cremated for reasons of hygiene by the family’s veterinarian, where his mistress had taken him during the morning for that very purpose. Given that I believe very little in coincidences, I suspect that the murderer had thrown a few poisoned treats to the dog when the animal was in the communal garden downstairs early that morning when the man had let him off the leash. As he sobbed for his wife, the poor man told us he always did that. Their dog Lampo had started to feel ill as they were going up in the elevator and when they went into the house he lay down prostrate on the floor with no strength left. The husband and wife then took him downstairs, with the man carrying him in his arms, and loaded him into the wife's runabout for her to take him to the vet, but at that point the dog died; then, while he certainly went to the bank in his own car in order not to arrive late, his wife took the animal to the vet in her car as planned, but only to have it cremated at that point."

"So, Evaristo, the murderer would not be in the throes of sudden raptus, but carefully prepares his crimes."

"If my idea that the dog was poisoned is true, I would agree."

"It’s bad luck that the animal's body is no longer available for an autopsy."

"That's right."

The fourth murder took place on Sunday, between midnight and 2:00 am according to the coroner. It had been carried out with the usual method of the ice pick jabbed in an ear, but the victim had been a man, a certain Alessandro Cipolla, sixty-six years old, retired, and he had been killed in the street.

My colleague Carla had found out from her deputy, who had had picked up a press release at Police Headquarters, that the dead man was a homeless drunk who in recent years had been living as a vagrant, sleeping under packing boxes in some corner of public galleries or doorways, and that he was already known to the police because of a call from a mobile phone to 113 a couple of months earlier from a woman who was very old but still clear-headed, and had previously been an English teacher. He had pestered her under the colonnade of Via Roma with a surly request for money and when he got nothing from her, he had spat at her. As soon as a patrol car had arrived, the grim teacher had asked the agents to take the particulars of her harasser, who in the meantime had continued to walk around her making raspberries and, alternately, belching foul-smelling effluvia at her.

She had subsequently made a complaint at Police Headquarters the same day but had withdrawn it, however, the following day out of compassion, "after a night of remorse like the Unnamed of Manzoni"4 it seems she had said in all seriousness to the perplexed assistant chief on duty.

The homeless Cipolla ate at soup kitchens and drank away not only his entire pension in bars and wine shops, but also what he could put together from begging, always with an aggressive manner because he was drunk from morning to night. He was a remnant of a man that no person in their right mind would be ruthless enough to strike physically in any way, let alone kill and in such an atrocious manner.

Considering the asocial status of the last victim, Deputy Police Commissioner Giandomenico Pumpo, mindful that he had been the head of the Anti Sect Team, had suddenly had the idea that it was a ritual murder by fanatics of the so-called acid youth satanism, not new to attacks on defenseless sleeping bums. Some had been seriously injured, some killed, even though their actions had been performed, until then, by covering the victims with flammable liquid and setting them on fire. Dr. Pumpo had oriented Evaristo Sordi along that line too.

With my mediation, Vittorio had informed Carla Garibaldi of the new lead and she had consequently published an investigative story in La Gazzetta Libera on diabolical sects, which made reference to the Ear Monster’s crimes. My friend was anonymously described as 'a source close to Police Headquarters'.