The Discordant Note (3 page)

He thought of soliciting Silvestri to have some anticipation about autopsy but he gave up, preferring to take advantage of that quiet moment to arrange his notes and add the latest information, in an attempt, unfortunately useless, to try to make sense of the murder.

At the end, tiredness had the upper hand, the same weariness that Germano had tried to lighten that morning, before the murder of Brandenburg Ralf forced him to go back to work.

When they knocked on the door, the commissioner wanted to look at the clock before uttering a single word, it was nearly seven o'clock in the evening and that meant that he had been asleep leaning against his chair for more than an hour.

“Come in”.

Inspector Piazza did not need to hear twice and went in; after a rather eloquent glance, Germano settled without much preamble.

“The thing is getting bad, Commissioner ...”.

“Damn bitch ... what happened, Piazza?”.

“I’ve been going over the victim’s printouts with a toothcomb for hours now, without getting nowhere; he never used the phone, actually, the only calls he received in the last three months, they were form the customer service of the telephone company, calls that lasted, however, less than ten seconds”.

“Master Brandenburg was an old-fashioned man ...”.

“A little bit too much, Commissioner ...he never used his mailbox”.

“Well ... listen, broaden the search to the last six months ... no, it’s better to the whole last year, you must find something ...”.

“Okay, I'll try”.

“Let me know immediately, Piazza, just in case there was any news”.

“You can count on it, Commissioner”.

Germano, sensing how the ongoing investigation was not that easy at all, passed his hand across his forehead in the hope that some idea did peep out, but the only thing who actually did peep out was instead Inspector Parisi, who took the place that Piazza had left some minutes before, sitting on one of the chairs facing the commissioner’s desk.

“What news do you have, Angelo?”.

“I found something ... the interpreter told me that he thought those letters were written by a person who was both very fond of the old Master but from which, however, wanted to keep some distance, I have here a copy of some sentences translated by the interpreter, Vincent ... give it a look”.

What could have been but it was not ... the things that come back are not always forever ... our recent meetings ... not to lose something that has been refund after you thought you lost it ...

After reading some of the phrases that the interpreter had been able to translate on the spot, Germano asked that the letters were fully translated; in the meantime he would have tried to discover the identity of the sender; the woman who signed them with the name of Corinna had to be traced.

“One more thing, Vincent ... the letters came from Monaco, all of them, the stamp of the German post office was still readable and the interpreter has confirmed to me that they were sent right from Bavaria”.

“I understand”.

“What are we doing now?”.

“We’ll call both Lufthansa and Alitalia, to see if the Master took one of their planes during the last year”.

“Okay, Vincent”.

Germano was about to add something when he was interrupted by the ringing of the phone.

“Hello”.

“Hi, Commissioner, it’s Silvestri”.

“Hello, Doctor, tell me everything”.

“I’m calling to confirm what I had already anticipated a few hours ago, the murder weapon was a broom handle, the shards of a particular type of wood that is used to make broomsticks that I’ve found near the wound it’s a proof to me”.

“I understand, what about the rest?”.

“Nothing to add, the victim had not been drugged, he had not been drinking, from what I know, the Master had not even had breakfast, or had eaten something, but very early this morning”.

“The time of death?”.

“About ten o'clock, you will receive my report with all the details later”.

“Thank you, Silvestri, see you soon”.

“Seeing you soon, Commissioner, is not a good wish ...”.

“Do what you want, Silvestri, read the thing as you like, have a good day”.

On hearing those last words, Parisi could not refrain to laugh.

“Why are you laughing, Angelo?”.

“Because Silvestri must have said one of his crap”.

“You guessed right ... but in addition to its proverbial shit, he has also confirmed that to kill the Master was a broomstick”.

“Okay, then, I will say to the men who are still in the house to look carefully for it; did Silvestri tell you something about the time of death?”.

“Ten, ten o’clock in the morning ... then, trying to recap, no signs of violation were found ... and the Master seems to have been struck from behind, by a person he surely knew, and he trusted”.

“Then, it won’t be difficult to find it, Vincent ...”.

“I would not be that sure ... Piazza came to me some minutes ago, he was going crazy trying to find something useful among the Master’s contacts”.

“How many will ever be?”.

“The problem is all here, Angelo, the only way that Brandenburg used to communicate seems to be the letters, not phone nor   e- mail”.

“Um ...”.

“We have to look at all those hundreds of letters one by one, sentence by sentence and even try to read between the lines”.

“I really need to start to get organized, then; I would need at least Venditti and Di Girolamo to accelerate a little bit all the work we have to do...”.

“Okay, Angelo, ask their help as soon as you see them, and start as soon as possible”.

The last sentence of the commissioner was interrupted by a knock on his door, a very harassing one.

“Come in”.

The man who had been commissioned by the Fossi & Sons to deliver the video with footage from that morning, showed up the two policemen.

He handed a DVD and, after having briefly explained how it worked, he turned and started to leave, but he was stopped by the commissioner.

“Don’t you want these?”.

“What, sir?”.

“The permissions for the video ...”.

“Ah ... I did not think they were ready, my boss told me that we would have to wait for weeks to get them ...”.

“Here they are, instead ...listen, give me your phone number and your boss’, in case we still need you”.

“Sure”.

The boy wrote several numbers on a piece of paper and after giving it to Germano, he took his leave.

The commissioner put it into his personal agenda after a quick glance, and then returned immediately to focus on Parisi.

“Have you heard, Angelo, how you should use this?”.

“Forget about that, Vincent, while he was speaking I was more intent to try and understand if he was only polite in giving us all the information or maybe he considered us two old stoned unable to have anything to do with technology”.

“Maybe the first one, or maybe not ... anyway, let's see what it is”.

The two policemen settled the DVD in the player and began to scroll through the images; the first few hours of the night were sieved on a fairly superficial way, both because they were not the ones they had to bet their attention on, and because, after all, the darkness made it almost impossible to distinguish any object or shape.

With the dawn, the images became cleaner; the small camera installed at the beginning of the avenue, clearly showed indeed, the arrival of the van of a freight forwarder and that one of the garbage compactor.

From this moment on, Germano reduced speed of scrolling until it is almost back to normal; Parisi, meanwhile, was nervously filling his notebook with any kind of information those images could provide, such as parts of license plate numbers of vehicles or clothing and characteristics of people who did not seem to be passing there by chance.

The search went on for over two hours, in which the only noteworthy thing that they saw was a couple greeting each other warmly before going away from the visual field.

The commissioner also discovered why his own correspondence often ended up in the mailbox of his neighbor; in a section of the video, indeed, he could clearly see the postman while resting comfortably on the scooter given to him by the company he worked for, preparing and smoking what seemed nothing but a joint.

Germano decided he would have later had a small talk with that boy.

The video was walking wearily towards the time when Brandenburg was supposed to have been murdered, when a strange thing caught the attention of the two policemen.

From the entrance of the driveway, they could clearly see someone stopping, quite decided, right in front of the intercom of the Master’s house.

Germano tried to get even closer to the video but he was forced to turn back by the sudden arrival of Gianni Piazza in his office.

It seemed to him that the inspector was almost out of breath as he prepared to speak, something which he did not succeed in doing, because stopped with sweeping gestures by the commissioner himself.

At that point, realizing how his colleagues were looking at something interesting, Piazza refrained from opening his mouth and approached the two.

Germano did not wait too long to involve the colleague in the discussion.

“What do you think it is, Piazza?”.

“It seems to me, Commissioner, that a young and rather thin boy called on the Master’s intercom twenty minutes before he died, at least if the time that I see on the display matches the real one”.

“The time is not offset, just ... it is not that clear ... but if you could send it back and review the pictures ... I had the feeling that the way he walked was not that of a boy”.

“But the clothing, Commissioner ... jeans and T-shirt, short hair and a cap on his head ... heck, it looks like a boy”.

At that point, Germano turned to Parisi asking him to send the tape forward as fast as possible; the images then speeded up to the moment they saw the gardener climbing over the fence and starting his work, followed after one hour by the same commissioner, who rushed to the crime scene after being awakened by Inspector Parisi’s phone call.

They were not able to see what they were not so sure if it was a boy or a girl, while exiting the main gate it , not before nor after the arrival of Germano and the policemen.

The three, at that point, sent the tape forward even more, carefully examining every face, shape and shadow that was wandering around the house during the police operations that followed the discovery of the body, but there was no trace of the “boy”.

Who broke that silence was Inspector Parisi.

“Maybe he blended into the crowd that arrived shortly after lunch time and so he was able to go away without being   noticed ...”.

“It 's possible, Angelo ... maybe he has been holed up inside the house waiting for the right moment to slip away ... or maybe it could have escaped bypassing the other fence, the one that lies on the other side of the house and which is not covered by any camera”.

“This is also possible, Vincent”.

“Anyway, let’s send a copy of this video to those in the know and ask them to enlarge all the details related to this guy, with the best definition they can get, will you deal with it, Angelo?”.

“Okay”.

“Piazza ... sorry but I was ...”.

“Don’t worry ... I came here, Commissioner, because I have something new as well”.

“Tell me”.

“I found two phone calls, quite long, the Master received from Germany; the first one dating back almost a year ago, while the second one is in February, this year”.

“Satisfy my curiosity, Piazza ... What area of ​​Germany did they come from?”.

“Monaco of Bavaria, I have already alerted our German colleagues to know where it was headed and who is the user ... is there something I don’t know and I should, sir?”.

“Indeed, yes, the letters that Brandenburg received from Germany came from Monaco of Bavaria, as well; the interpreter confirmed it by examining the postmarks”.

“Well then, at least there's something to work on”.

“Yeah ...”.

Germano did not show himself that enthusiastic; the idea, indeed, that the investigation spreads more and more, even to be carried out abroad, could not do anything but increase the concern of the commissioner on the success of the whole thing.

After making ​​the point about the duties of each of the two inspectors, they left the commissioner alone and returned to their offices; Germano, before dismissing them for good, wrote down the orders for their dinner, which he would have ordered at the restaurant across the street, asking for the dinner to be delivered at his home.

Once left alone, he sank to a light sleep and reflections on the lives of people like Master Brandenburg.

The commissioner was starting to know his eclectic neighbor, perhaps, only now, after he had died, but from the few details of his life that had managed to emerge in those few hours, the peculiarity of the existence of a great musician, was clear enough. Although he had avoided mentioning it to his colleagues, it happened already a couple of times during the day that Germano, in fact, believed he knew what was going to happen, but in both the circumstances he had to change his mind; the facts in question were not details of such an importance, if seen in the general context of the investigation, but enough to make the commissioner realize that he dad to prepare himself to further revelations and surprises once he would have penetrated deeper into Brandenburg’s life.

Germano’s thoughts gradually gave away to a sleep that lasted for at least a couple of hours, until he was awakened by the sharp blow of someone knocking on his door .

“Come in”.

The inspectors Piazza and Parisi came in and went back to sit on the same chairs they used before; by their looks, Germano realized that they had not come empty-handed.

The first to break that silence was Parisi.

“First of all, Commissioner, I proceeded to send those images to the specialists; I was also able to speak to some of them”.

“And what do they say?”.

“They say they'll try ... but we should not expect too much, the resolution of the camera is pretty poor as well as the fact that the sun was contrary”.