The Girl in the Fog Page 13

  ‘All right, listen up, everybody,’ the group leader said in a loud voice. They all immediately gathered around him. ‘I’ve spoken to the incident room down in the valley, and they say the weather forecast isn’t good. It’s going to rain for at least forty-eight hours, starting tonight, so we’ll need to suspend our search until the second of January.’

  The men didn’t take this well. Some of them had travelled many kilometres to get here, leaving their families behind and paying their own expenses. This was a blow to their morale.

  The group leader tried to placate them. ‘I know you don’t think it’d be any problem for you, but the conditions of the terrain are really going to become impossible over the next few hours.’

  ‘The mud will cover up any tracks,’ someone pointed out.

  ‘Or reveal them,’ the group leader replied. ‘Either way, we can’t do our best if there are these limitations. Trust me, it’d only be a wasted effort.’

  In the end, he managed to convince them. Martini watched as they walked back sadly to their cars. But on their way, they passed another group of people.

  In the middle of this group stood Bruno Kastner.

  As they passed him, each of them stopped to shake his hand or give him a silent pat on the back. Martini could have joined them and shown the man he felt just as much solidarity with him as they did, but he didn’t. He stood motionless by his four-by-four. Then, without anyone taking any notice of him, he got in. He was the first to drive away.

  He was standing in the corridor in his dressing gown and slippers. He had been knocking insistently on the bathroom door for a good ten minutes. Only the distorted sound of a rock song came from inside, but no answer. Martini was starting to lose patience. ‘Just how much longer are you going to be?’ He saw Clea coming up the stairs, carrying a stack of clean laundry. ‘She’s been locked in there for an hour,’ he said. ‘What the hell does a girl do in the bathroom that long?’

  Clea smiled. ‘Make herself look beautiful, you idiot.’ Then she added in a low voice, ‘She’s been invited to a party tonight.’

  ‘Who invited her?’ Martini asked, surprised.

  ‘What do you care? It’s a good sign, isn’t it? She’s starting to make friends.’

  ‘Does that mean we’ll be spending New Year’s Eve on our own?’

  ‘Have you got any plans?’ Clea asked with a wink, proceeding to the closet.

  ‘We can still afford a pizza and a bottle of wine.’

  And he took advantage of the fact that Clea had her hands full as she passed him to pinch her bottom.

  Monica left home at about eight. She was still wearing black, but tonight at least she had allowed herself a skirt. Seeing her like this, it struck Loris Martini suddenly that his daughter would soon be a fully grown woman. It would happen overnight, without warning. The little girl who used to huddle in his arms during thunderstorms wouldn’t ask for his protection any more. He knew, though, that she would always need it. He just had to find a way to take care of her without her noticing.

  While Clea was in the shower, Martini dropped by the pizzeria on the corner and ordered two take-away capricciosas. When he got back home, he found his wife lying on the sofa in her soft flannel pyjamas, a blanket over her legs. ‘I thought this was going to be an adventurous kind of evening, not a cosy one,’ he said.

  He put the pizzas down on a coffee table, took her face in both hands and kissed her. They kissed for a long time, savouring the taste and the warmth, then, without saying a word, she led him upstairs, to their bedroom.

  How long had it been since they’d last made love like this? Martini wondered, staring up at the ceiling as they lay side by side, naked. Oh, sure, there had been other occasions when they’d had sex after the thing. But this was the first time he hadn’t thought about the thing while they were doing it. It hadn’t been easy to regain their old complicity or even just the desire to do it again. At first, they’d made love angrily, as if out for revenge. It was a way of reproaching each other for what had happened without having to argue. They had always ended up worn out.

  But this evening had been different.

  ‘Do you think our daughter’s happy?’ Clea asked out of the blue.

  ‘Monica’s a teenager. All teenagers suffer.’

  ‘Don’t joke about it, I want a proper answer,’ she said reproachfully. ‘Did you see how happy she was when she went out tonight?’

  She was right. There had been a palpable euphoria in the house such as had been absent for too long. ‘There’s one thing I’ve realised after what happened to that girl, Anna Lou,’ he said, and he saw her grow more attentive. ‘There’s always too little time to get to know your children. The Kastners are probably wondering now where they went wrong, what mistake they could possibly have made to bring them this suffering, when in their lives they took the small detour that led them to this point … The truth is, we don’t have the time to ask ourselves if our children are happy, because there’s something more important to do: asking ourselves if we’re happy for them and making sure our mistakes don’t impact on them.’

  Clea may well have thought he was laying the blame on her, but she didn’t let on. Instead, she kissed him again, grateful for his reflections.

  Shortly afterwards, they sat half-naked at the kitchen table, eating cold pizza and drinking the red wine Martini kept aside for this kind of occasion, from odd glasses. He told her anecdotes about his colleagues and pupils, just to make her laugh. It was like being back at university, when they would run out of money at the end of the month and find themselves sharing a tin of tuna in the one-room apartment they’d moved into.

  God, he loved his wife so much, he’d do anything for her. Anything.

  They were so close tonight, they didn’t even notice that it was after midnight and the New Year had begun. It was the driving rain outside that brought them back to reality.

  ‘I’d better call Monica,’ Clea said, getting up from the table and grabbing her mobile. ‘In this downpour, you may have to go and pick her up.’

  The university student vanished and she was once again the wife and mother she’d become over the years. Martini witnessed the transformation as she waited silently for an answer at the other end of the line. Then he saw her pull more tightly around her that old cardigan she’d stolen from him and now wore only at home. She wasn’t cold, but scared.

  ‘I can’t get a connection,’ she said anxiously.

  ‘It’s only just past midnight. Everyone’ll be calling to wish each other a happy New Year. The network must be overloaded. That’s normal.’

  But Clea didn’t listen to him. She kept trying, over and over, in vain. ‘What if something’s happened to her?’

  ‘Now you’re being paranoid.’

  ‘I’m going to call the place where the party’s being held.’

  Martini let her. Clea found the number and called. ‘What do you mean, she didn’t turn up?’ There was something heart-rending in her voice now. As her mind ran through a whole series of catastrophic scenarios, her facial expression quickly built up a crescendo of negative emotions. By the time she had hung up, her anxiety had turned to terror.

  ‘They say she never turned up.’

  ‘Calm down,’ Martini said. ‘Let’s try and think where she might have gone.’

  But when he tried to go closer to her, she waved him away with a peremptory gesture.

  ‘You must find her, Loris. Promise me you’ll find her.’

  He got into the car and drove around Avechot, not knowing where to go. The thunderstorm raging over the valley had emptied the streets of pedestrians. The rain stopped him from seeing clearly, and the four-by-four’s windscreen wipers couldn’t keep up with the torrents of water.

  He soon realised that Clea had infected him with her own agitation. He, too, found himself drawing a macabre comparison between Monica and Anna Lou.

  No, it’s not possible, he said to himself, trying to dismiss the idea from his mind.


  It had only been twenty minutes since he’d left home, but it felt like an eternity. Soon, he was sure, his wife would call and ask if he had any news. He had nothing to tell her.

  Monica gone, vanished into thin air. The police raising the alarm. The news broadcast on television. The search parties in the woods.

  No, it won’t happen. Not to her.

  But the world was full of monsters. Unsuspected monsters.

  He thought about Anna Lou’s father, remembered him as he received encouraging pats on the back, remembered his knowing look. Because a parent always knows the truth, however impossible it is for him to admit it. That morning, he’d tried to put himself in Kastner’s shoes, but couldn’t. What now?

  I must find her. I promised. I can’t lose Clea. Not again.

  He had to keep a clear head, hard as that was. Then it occurred to him to go back to the starting point. The party.

  Within five minutes, he had arrived at the door of a house from which muffled noise and powerful, rhythmic music emerged. He rang the doorbell, then knocked repeatedly, his hair and clothes getting soaked as he did so. When at last somebody took notice and opened the door to him, he stormed in.

  There were at least seventy young people crammed together in the living room. Some were dancing, others lay sprawled on the sofas. The music was too loud for talking, but alcohol had made everyone more relaxed. The half-light and the thick cigarette smoke made it hard for him to spot any familiar faces.

  At last, he recognised a couple of his pupils. One of them was Lucas, the rebel with the skull tattoo behind his ear.

  ‘Happy New Year, sir!’ he said as Martini approached, and blew his liquor breath into his face.

  ‘Have you seen my daughter?’

  The boy pretended to think about it. ‘Let’s see … What does she look like? Can you describe her?’

  Martini put his hand in his pocket and removed a picture of Monica from his wallet.

  Lucas took the picture and studied it. ‘She’s pretty,’ he said, to provoke him. ‘She might have been here tonight.’

  But Martini was in no mood for jokes. He grabbed Lucas by his sweaty T-shirt and pushed him violently against the nearest wall. He’d never before acted like this, at least not in public. A few people turned towards them.

  ‘Hey, guys, there’s a fight!’ someone announced, and many of those present gathered round.

  All Martini was doing, though, was staring into Lucas’s eyes. ‘Have you seen her, yes or no?’

  The boy wasn’t used to being treated this way, and it was obvious that he would have liked to respond in kind. Instead, he said with a menacing smile, ‘I could report you for this.’

  Martini refused to be intimidated. ‘I’m not going to ask you again.’

  Lucas abruptly shook off his teacher’s hands. ‘I know where she is,’ he admitted, then added triumphantly, ‘But you’re not going to like it.’

  It had stopped raining by the time Martini reached the house. The lights were off inside. The sound of the doorbell echoed in the silence. Shortly afterwards, a light came on in the corridor.

  Martini saw the scene through the frosted glass of the door. It was like a mirage or a bad dream.

  A young man with a bare, very smooth chest opened the door. He was barefoot and wearing nothing but tracksuit bottoms. Behind him, Monica’s head peered out of one of the rooms. She was dressed, but her rumpled hair told another story.

  As they drove back home in the four-by-four, neither of them said a word for a long time. Martini had called his wife to tell her everything was all right, and that he was coming home with their daughter, but had preferred not to add anything else.

  ‘The party was a bore, so we left,’ Monica said as if to justify her actions. Her father said nothing. ‘We fell asleep and lost all track of time. I’m sorry.’

  Martini gripped the wheel angrily, heedless of the pain in his left hand. ‘Have you been smoking?’ he asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know what I mean. Was that grass?’

  She shook her head, although she knew it was pointless to lie. ‘I don’t know what it was, but I swear nothing else happened.’

  Martini tried to remain calm. ‘Anyway, you’ll have to explain yourself to your mother now.’

  He parked the white four-by-four in the drive. Clea was in the doorway, her cardigan pulled tight about her. Monica got out of the car first. Martini watched her as she ran to the house. Her mother opened her arms wide and clasped her to her chest. It was a liberating hug. Martini sat watching the scene through the windscreen, afraid to interrupt this moment with his presence. He thought back to what had happened to his family just six months earlier, when he had been on the brink of losing everything.

  The thing.

  No, it would never happen again.

  3 January

  Eleven days after the disappearance

  The forecasts had been accurate. The rain hadn’t stopped for two whole days.

  But the third morning was illumined by a pale sun that had been crouching behind a thin blanket of off-white clouds.

  Martini had decided this was the right day to devote himself to the gazebo in the garden. He wanted to distract Clea from the business of the missing girl, and dusting off the idea of a vegetable garden and a greenhouse struck him as the most appropriate move. His wife had nothing to do with herself, and spent her days watching TV programmes that dealt exclusively with the case of Anna Lou Kastner. In the absence of an official, verified truth, everyone felt they had the right to present their own version. It was the only thing being talked about right now on TV. And it wasn’t only the experts giving their verdicts. Starlets and others from the showbiz world were invited on, too. It was indecent. The most absurd, most fantastic theories were being put forward, the most insignificant aspects of the story of Anna Lou dissected, analysed and discussed as if at any moment such discussions might lead to the solution of the mystery.

  The impression was that the circus of chatter might go on ad infinitum.

  The TV was constantly on in Martini’s house, and so this morning he had got in his car and gone to the DIY store. He had bought a roll of plasticised canvas and another of flexible sheet metal, as well as a whole lot of nuts and bolts and steel vices to hold the tie beams in place. As he was loading everything into the capacious boot of his four-by-four, Martini had been disrupted by a sound.

  The scraping of a skateboard on the asphalt.

  He turned and saw Mattia just a few metres from him. ‘Mattia!’ He raised his arm to greet him.

  Mattia didn’t see him at first. When he did, he had a strange reaction. He slowed down, then accelerated and sped off.

  Martini sighed. For the life of him, he couldn’t understand the boy. He got in his car to drive home.

  He always avoided the route through the village, instead taking a ring road that skirted the centre. The traffic usually flowed quite well, but this morning there was a whole line of slowly moving cars ahead of him. Maybe there had been an accident. They were frequent at the crossroads a bit further on. After a while, indeed, he caught sight of the flashing lights of a police patrol car. As he advanced, though, he couldn’t see any damaged vehicle.

  It wasn’t an accident. It was a roadblock.

  They were common in Avechot these days. It was all because of the missing girl. Quite apart from the fact that they were a great bother, Martini couldn’t see the point of these roadblocks. It was a bit like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, he thought. But he suspected that the police, under a constant media spotlight and with the mystery deepening with every passing day, had to show the public they were at least doing something.

  There were no side roads to turn onto in order to avoid the roadblock, and it would have looked suspicious to do a U-turn. So Martini resigned himself and patiently waited his turn. But as he moved slowly forward, a particular kind of anxiety grew inside him. There was a tingling in his
fingertips, and a strange feeling of emptiness in his stomach.

  ‘Good morning, may I see your papers please?’ the uniformed officer said, leaning down to the open window.

  Martini had everything ready. He handed over his licence and registration.

  ‘Thank you,’ the officer said, then walked away towards the patrol car.

  Martini sat watching the scene. There were only two police officers. The second was in the middle of the road with a signalling disc, motioning the cars to stop. The officer he had spoken to had got in the car and was dictating the details of the documents into his radio. Martini could see him clearly through the rear window. But, after a while, he also began to wonder why they were taking so long. Maybe it was only an impression, maybe it happened to everyone who was stopped, but all the same the suspicion grew in him that something wasn’t right.

  At last, the officer got out of the police car and came walking back towards him. ‘Signor Martini, could you follow me please?’

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked, perhaps a little too alarmed.

  ‘Just a formality, it’ll only take a few minutes,’ the officer replied softly.

  They had escorted him to the little police station in Avechot. There they had made him sit down in some kind of records office. Apart from the filing cabinets and the files lined up on the shelves, there was a jumble of everything in the room: obsolete computers, lamps, writing materials, even a stuffed bird of prey.

  There were also a table and two chairs. Martini kept looking at the empty chair opposite him, wondering who would occupy it. Forty minutes had already passed since he had arrived, and still no one had come in. The silence and the smell of dust were draining.

  The door opened suddenly and a man of about thirty in a jacket and tie entered the room. He was holding Martini’s registration certificate and driving licence. He looked mild-mannered. ‘I’m Officer Borghi,’ he said, smiling. ‘Sorry to have kept you waiting.’

  Martini shook the hand held out to him. Faced with such politeness, he relaxed a little. ‘That’s all right.’

  Borghi sat down on the empty chair and placed the documents on the table, giving them a quick glance as though he hadn’t had time to check them earlier. ‘So, Signor … Martini,’ he said, reading the name.