The Commissioner: A Strange Case
Detective Story : The Commissioner: A Strange Case
Short Story, By Prabir Rai Chaudhuri . All Copyright Reserved 2020.
Nicola was there in the dim light of the office. The house, his house, was silent. It was just after midnight. He had been working on a case for days. The worst thing was that it wasn't an official case. He shook his head, Luca would have said that he was not immune to female charm, and perhaps he wouldn't have strayed far from the truth, as much as he was ready to deny it. He still remembered vividly when that girl with red hair and extraordinary green eyes had burst into his office.
-“you have to help me”- he began, his tone was slightly high-pitched, and betrayed apprehension. He had let her speak. What else could he do? The girl had sat down with a casual and resolute manner. She certainly did not go unnoticed, not only for her hair or her eyes but also for her manners and expensive clothes, which related her to a good family was all too evident. He had observed her for a long time.
And he had listened carefully to her words, she had asked him to investigate her family, privately, of course, because she suspected something strange was happening. She was the granddaughter of Sergio Endrio, of the Endrio Enterprise. Afterwards he had escorted her to the door saying that he could do nothing.
But that same evening he had called her back. What she had said to him had remained imprinted in his head. Her words were branded in his thoughts: – “I’m sorry to have wasted your precious time, and maybe you’re right, I’m too imaginative, but don’t you think it’s strange that it’s a coincidence?”- He had thought about it for a long time, and indeed it was strange. He had only conjectures in his hand, and yet there was really something wrong.
An old man found dead in his bed, nothing strange so far, just as perhaps it wasn't so strange that a drunk man was killed in a hunting accident. And perhaps it wasn't strange that a wife grieving for the loss of her husband committed suicide. No, nothing strange except that the old man was Sergio Endrio while the man who died in the accident was his son Giulio: his heir, while the woman who had taken her own life was his wife. Strange was that a death, an accident and a suicide had occurred in little more than a month. That's how he began to investigate.
A week had passed and what he had gathered was little. Very little. Not even enough to start an official investigation. And yet, he felt something was escaping him. He closed his eyes for a moment. Thanks to Sara Endrio's help, he had learned many small details, but alone they did not lead him anywhere. Experience had taught him that the clues had to be read all together, but the more he tried to connect them, the more they lost meaning.
He knew that a bottle of rat poison was missing from the pantry. He knew that Giulio Endrio almost never drank, and was not used to getting drunk, he also knew that his wife hated typing on the computer, and it was strange that she had not decided to write the farewell note by hand. But in the end it was just another piece of a puzzle that seemed unsolvable. According to the daughter it was not a suicide. She said that her mother was a strong woman, and that she would never have taken her own life, of course it is difficult for a child to accept the weaknesses of their parents, and then there was always the matter of the diary... the diary! That was the key to everything. He took the car keys and ran outside. During the trip he made a call. Then he stopped the car in front of the Endrio house. And he called Giulio's brother, Salvatore. He came immediately, showing himself to be kind and helpful as always... too helpful, now he knew.
“How does it feel to be responsible for three murders?” he asked point-blank.
what excuse me? - the voice was calm, almost incredulous, but the expression had changed. Cold and distant, alert.
You know it took me a while to get there. You know you can deny it but I requested to exhume the body of your father and brother. Even though I already know how he did it. I still don't know why, or rather I'm not sure.- He prayed to heaven that his bluff wouldn't be called, there was still no official investigation.
Oh, yeah? And excuse me, but how would you have arrived at this crazy conclusion?
You see, sometimes even the smallest detail can derail a perfectly good plan.
And what would this detail be? - asked Mr. Endrio, his voice was sharp and harsh.
The diary. Only me, the killer and Sara knew it was missing. It's a trifle, I almost forgot about it and then... a twist of fate... I found myself repeating her own words. When we first met she told me it was a shame her sister-in-law's diary couldn't be found.
Could Sara have told me that, right? - he asked in an annoyed voice.
No. She couldn't have. She contacted me because she didn't trust her.
You have a very vivid imagination, Commissioner!
I kept wondering what the connection could be. And then it occurred to me that there was no rat poison in the house, you know this type of poison is often arsenic-based. Arsenic in small doses does not kill but it makes those who ingest it deteriorate, while a massive dose causes death. You poisoned your father, thinking you would inherit the company. I checked, he is full of debts. But something went wrong: it was Giulio who inherited the company. So you killed him. Everyone present told me that your brother was drunk, but your brother did not drink. I think you drugged him, and then killed him. You know, an autopsy would certainly find traces of arsenic, while a ballistics test would ascertain that the shot came from your rifle. His sister-in-law, on the other hand, was murdered because she had discovered everything. - Mr. Endrio reached into his pocket to take out his gun, “that was already as good as a confession,” thought Nicola. At that moment the police cars arrived.
That Cursed Day
The ferry from Florø threw me up in Måløy, the most useless town in all of Norway. It was a Saturday night in August and, for a change, it was raining. It had never stopped since I landed in Bergen days before. A light and continuous rain, annoying, that stopped for a few minutes and then started again. The ground was soaked with water like a saturated sponge, on the sidewalks I encountered more snails than pedestrians, large slugs that from time to time I found photocopied on the asphalt by the wheels of moving bicycles, the sky was always gray and dark, the temperature fixed at 12° or less. That was the Norwegian summer. The 35° of Rome, the sky always blue and clear and the suffocating heat were a distant memory.
I landed on the island of Vågsøy around 10 pm, but it was still light as if it were afternoon. The city of Måløy stretched out in front of me, gray and melancholic. I had a backpack on my shoulder, my only luggage, and I looked like any other tourist. No hotels, no rental cars and above all no weapons. From above they were concerned about the success of the mission and the perfect camouflage, taken care of down to the smallest details. However, they hadn't thought about the blisters on my feet, bandaged up to the max. In a week I had covered more kilometers than a marathon runner in full training. And it wasn't over yet.
From the port square I went to the first street worthy of the name to look for information about the campsite. It was deserted. I wandered around for a few minutes until I saw a car stop and a boy and a girl got out. I went towards them and in understandable Norwegian I asked them where Steinvik Camping was. The answer was like a hammer blow to my bruised feet. I had landed on an island and to sleep I had to go back to the continent, crossing the long S-shaped bridge and another long stretch of road, over four kilometers in the rain to the campsite.
I was greeted by a middle-aged woman, cold and not at all happy to have a new customer. Those who travel in a tent pay little, so they are not the favorite clientele. She did not allow me to pay with my debit card and so I was forced to thin out the few crowns I had left. I found a pitch, set up the tent in the rain that showed no sign of stopping, put my backpack and sleeping bag inside and went to the reception to look for something to put under my teeth. I returned to the tent and ate an ice cream and a snack, listening to the drops hitting the sheet and hoping that at least the next morning the weather would allow me to return to Måløy without risking rheumatism.
I woke up at 7. It was still raining. I cursed that bastard weather again, got dressed and went to the bathroom. Then I took down the tent, stuffed everything into my backpack, threw it on my shoulders and set off again, towards the S-bridge and the island of wonders. As I walked, almost limping on the sidewalk and sheltered from the rain by a light keeway, I wondered if and when my contact would show up. They hadn't given me any description of the man - or was it a woman? - I was supposed to meet.
From the bridge I took Gate 2 – simply “road 2”, without much imagination – to reach the ticket office at the port, where I had disembarked the evening before. There was a buzz in the square, a ferry had just arrived and a few people were standing on the pier or moving away from it. I was heading straight for the benches to rest my feet when I heard someone calling my name. No one said my name, obviously, but the guy coming towards me, who had just gotten off the ship, had shouted a not very discreet “ Where are you going? ”
I hoped he wasn't mad at me, but I was out of luck. The man repeated the question. Not liking to shout in the middle of the street, I preferred to get closer before answering, but he insisted again. When I found him in front of me, I hoped - I prayed , in fact - that it wasn't the contact V. had sent me, otherwise I would make him pay dearly. He was a man in his fifties, he didn't look older even if he carried them badly, taller than me and at least thirty kilos more. He had a red nose and cheekbones, the typical complexion of someone who has made alcohol his best friend, and in fact his breath stank of wine and his eyes were clouded. He was wearing jeans and a jacket and on his head he had a gray fur hat. Granted, that was hardly a tropical summer, but we weren't even in the Arctic. I greeted him in Norwegian and he answered in English. Did I really speak his language so badly? After the initial pleasantries he took off his hat. It was the first time I had seen a man who did not change his appearance after taking off his hat. I almost thought he was wearing two identical hats on top of each other, his hair so closely resembled the mass of gray hair he had just removed. I told him I was headed to Selje and the medieval ruins of Selje Kloster. “ Go ,” he said, heading towards the ticket booth benches with me. The morning had started really well.
I spent two hours with that guy, sitting on a bench and looking out at the sea. The longest two hours of my life. The man spoke slowly, struggling to find the words, more because of the alcohol circulating in his blood than because of his poor command of English. Every now and then I turned in the hope of seeing someone approaching – my contact – but that island seemed deserted again, so much so that I almost convinced myself that he could be the person I was supposed to meet. No, it wasn't possible, I thought, she wouldn't go on like that and besides, that Norwegian really seemed authentic or the agent sent by V. should have won an Oscar for that performance.
We didn't introduce ourselves. Now that I remember, he never told me his name or asked me mine. He was just interested in my trip and started giving me a series of tips on the "attractions" of the place. He asked for a map of the island - I had gotten one on the ferry - and told me to go visit the little island of Silda, which was located northeast of the port.
“There are no ships going there and I am on foot,” I replied.
“But she's very beautiful,” he told me.
What do you want, to go swimming? I wanted to ask him.
"Then go and see the mushroom."
You should know that this is one of the tourist attractions of Måløy, a large rock that the erosion of the sea has shaped into a mushroom. But it is on the other side of the island, twenty kilometers round trip.
“And how do I get there? I don’t have a car,” I repeated.
“On foot,” he said calmly.
That's why V. didn't let me carry weapons.
He handed me back the map and opened his backpack, taking out a one-and-a-half-liter Coca-Cola bottle, filled with a thick, mud-colored liquid, with a two-centimeter whitish layer at the bottom.
« Do you like wine? »
“ No, thanks ,” was my quick, firm reply.
If that was wine, I was the Pope.
But it looked like it, because the man unscrewed the cork and took a long drink. He said that in Norway wine was very expensive—like everything else, I wanted to add—and so he made it himself at home. I didn’t investigate the ingredients he used.
The conversation turned to my trip. He advised me to take the boat to Selje, because it took less time than the bus. It was true. The ferry was at 9 pm and would arrive at the island at 10:30 pm, while the bus was at 8 pm and would arrive at 10 pm. But it was all too clear that it was better to take the bus, since it left and arrived before the boat.
I tried to explain it to him.
“But the ship takes less time,” he told me stubbornly.
I remained calm and tried to make him understand the game of timetables and routes that allowed the bus to arrive at the same destination half an hour before the ship, even though it took longer.
"I'd take the ship if I were you."
It was a losing battle from the start.
I stood up to stretch my legs. The weather seemed to have improved, the rain had stopped but the sky was still covered by those eternal clouds. There was no sign of my contact. V. hadn't told me much, only that I had to get to Måløy and wait for the agent the next day. The meeting would take place between 9 and 21. I shouldn't have waited any longer. If he didn't show up, the mission would be cancelled and I would have to leave for Selje.
I sat back down and saw the man still clinging to the bottle. In the meantime he had finished a third of it and so half a liter of wine was gone. Not counting the one he had downed before arriving on the island.
He started talking again and he still ran out of words to complete his sentences. He started hitting his forehead with his fist, as if he wanted to shake the gray matter to free the words that wouldn't come out. Then he turned to me with that look lost in the fog of alcohol and he pronounced each word as if it were going to be his last.
“ I don't think well because I'm drunk ,” he said.
And you continue to drink?, I was about to ask him, but I was afraid of the answer. Perhaps it would have been too much of a thought for the state of his mind.
After a few minutes he stood up, wished me a good trip and left. I watched him walk away with that uncertain walk, his backpack on one shoulder and his fur hat pulled back on his head, until he disappeared from sight on some street of that city without a future.
I stood there, mulling over the mission and why they had entrusted it to me, an agent who had never participated in foreign operations. Perhaps because I was the only one who knew Norwegian.
“I have no free agents,” V. told me a few days earlier. “They’re all out, and it’s an easy mission, you just have to meet the contact and get a message.”
“I've been in the office all my life,” I objected.
“An agent is an agent and must fulfill any assignment, you know that well.”
He was right. So four days later I left Rome for Bergen.
And now here I was, waiting for a colleague I had never seen, in a town that had made rain its reason for living, with my feet tormented by blisters, dying of boredom on an island that passed off a bridge and a rock as tourist attractions.
I looked at the time on my phone. It was almost noon. I decided to pop into Narvesen, the chain of small supermarkets where you can find everything at decent prices. I bought myself a slice of pizza, knowing that it would be far from the one I had eaten in Rome. It did not disappoint my expectations, but I was hungry and that was easy. I drank some water and walked towards the bus station. Maybe the contact would come through and I could take the bus to Selje.
«There are no buses leaving today, it's Sunday.»
I had been there for several minutes deciphering the departure times. Then a bus had arrived, unloaded its passengers and the driver had come towards me, so I had taken the opportunity to ask him for information.
"You have to take the ship."
“But it says here that the bus leaves at 8pm,” I pointed out.
“Yes, but not today,” he repeated. “It’s Sunday and there are no boats at this time. But the ship leaves at 9:00. If you need to get back to the port, I’ll give you a lift.”
I had no reason to stay there, so I took advantage of the driver's courtesy. My feet thanked him.
When I returned to my bench, I noticed a fisherman. He had just arrived and was about to cast his line right there, on the water of the pier where ferries and private boats docked. He reminded me of the Romans who fished on the Tiber, in the heart of Rome. I was lost in thought when a man sat down next to me. I couldn't see his face well because he was turned away, but the smoke from a cigarette reached my nose.
“Go to the bus station,” he said without even taking the cigarette out of his mouth. “And wait for me there.”
I didn't have time to turn toward him before he had already disappeared. The contact! I didn't get up immediately so as not to attract attention, even though there was only that fisherman besides me. But I couldn't know if there had been anyone watching from one of the houses near the pier. I took the map out of my pocket and started looking at it as if I were choosing my next destination. After a few minutes I got up, heading to the appointment. I cursed my colleague, who could have shown up five minutes earlier at the bus terminal without forcing me to this umpteenth torture for my bleeding feet, and the rain that had started falling again and that island that should have remained uninhabited.
In a quarter of an hour I had arrived, but the station was deserted. My contact was not there and would not arrive again, but at that moment I certainly could not suspect it. I tried to remember what I had seen of him. In training we had learned to record in a few seconds every little detail even if we saw him out of the corner of our eye.
He was about six feet tall. Sitting down, I noticed that he was a few inches taller than me. He weighed about eighty kilos, with short black hair, perhaps partly parted. He had no beard and was clean-shaven. He was wearing khaki pants and a yellow polo shirt. On his feet he had a pair of canvas shoes, but I didn't remember the color. I didn't say anything about his age, given my proverbial inability to tell anyone's age.
I waited for a couple of hours before deciding to get up and walk back to the port. Maybe it was a mistake, but two hours seemed too long, something had definitely happened that prevented him from showing up. But I certainly couldn't go looking for him, nor could I ask anyone. What to do in these cases? Damn office work, someone else in my place would have managed better.
When I arrived at the port, the ticket office had just opened. I went in, asked the girl when the ship to Selje was leaving, just to pass a few minutes, then went back to sit outside on the usual bench.
The police siren broke the silence half an hour later. So something is happening in Måløy too, I said to myself, as I watched the patrol car head towards the bus station. A few minutes later an ambulance arrived, and a thought crossed my mind.
My contact gets in touch about three hours early, fails to show up for the appointment, and now police and ambulances are racing through the deserted city streets. Were the two events connected?
The answer came to me an hour later. A couple of American tourists were coming from the terminus and the man said that someone had found a body over the side of the road, a couple of kilometers north. He was a foreigner, maybe a tourist. I was talking to them when the police car pulled into the port square and two officers got out. They went to the ticket office and talked to the girl for a few minutes, then one of them saw us and came out to question us.
Had we seen a man dressed in khaki pants, blue canvas shoes and a yellow T-shirt? We all said no. The officer asked the same question to the fisherman, who gave the same answer.
I was lucky. When the contact sat down next to me, the fisherman had his back to me, so he couldn't see him. And the ticket office at the port was still closed. There was no one else there except me and the man fishing on the dock.
The officers left, the Yankees began to stroll around the port chatting about this unusual event and I collapsed on the bench in a panic.
V. had not given instructions on what to do in the event of the contact's death, but I suppose that was equivalent to not meeting. After all, I had been waiting since 9 that morning and it was almost 5 pm. The fact that I had seen the contact, that he had spoken to me and that an ambulance had taken away his body were just details.
Anyway, I would have to wait another four hours before I could leave that damn island. Four hours in which anything could have happened.
Who had killed my colleague? Because I didn't believe he had died of illness. What message was he supposed to convey to me? What was his mission? Where did he come from? Why had he been silenced?
All those questions threatened to shatter my nerves. I had to keep calm and continue to pretend to be a tourist leaving for Selje. And sharpen my eyesight, notice any suspicious character or attitude. And remember, above all, that I had no weapons, but my enemies, who had killed my contact, did .
I went into the ticket office and started chatting with the girl. I mentioned what had happened in the hope of getting more details, but she knew less than I did. So I started talking about Selje and asked her about the monastery ruins. I managed to spend an hour. It was now 6 pm and there were still three hours to go until the ferry arrived.
I sat back down on the bench, but this time I kept an eye on the harbour square so I could spot anyone who might be approaching.
The next three hours were not easy to spend and more than once I feared I would lose my skin. I spent half an hour walking along the main street, I went into Narvesen absentmindedly looking at the products and buying myself a snack, I came out retracing my steps and saw the car. Or rather, it was the car that saw me.
It was a white sedan and there were two people inside. They didn't look Norwegian, even though the license plate was. A rental car. They were going the opposite direction from me and the passenger, who was on the same side as me, didn't take his eyes off me until he passed me. I swore he kept looking at me in the rearview mirror until a bend in the road made it impossible for him to look at me anymore.
I didn't show that I had noticed, I watched everything out of the corner of my eye while I munched on my snack and pretended to look at the windows I passed. For the next hour I wondered who those two were and why that man was watching me so insistently, but deep down I knew that I couldn't dismiss that fact as a simple coincidence. Even a newbie on the first day of class would have guessed that. "Coincidences don't exist," they had told us during training. And now that I knew for sure that it wasn't, how was I going to get out of it unscathed?
Seven o'clock passed, and by eight the rain had increased in intensity. I took shelter in the ticket office at the port and found the girl explaining something to a customer. Outside, the fisherman continued undauntedly to catch fish with his line, throwing them onto the dock and leaving them to die in agony, panting. I could almost hear the rhythmic thumps of his tail on the concrete becoming less frequent as the life left the creature. He took a long time to die. How long did it take for me to make contact? How had he been killed?
As these questions formulated themselves in my head, I recognized, parked on the road beyond the port square, the rental car I had spotted an hour earlier. Inside was only the man who had looked at me. Where was the other?
I went to sit in one of the chairs arranged in a circle in the ticket booth and heard the girl say hello to the customer she was talking to. The man, at least six feet tall and weighing a hundred pounds, with a shaved head and sunglasses, well dressed, gave me a long look before leaving and heading towards the waiting car. And so now they both had me inspected, registering every detail of me in their minds.
Don't worry, I told myself, everything is under control. In their place, you would have acted the same way. V. also always recommended that we carefully observe each person in the scene to be controlled. "Anyone can be your prey, anyone can hide a different identity and different intentions," he often told us.
Come to think of it, he looked like the spitting image of me. I started to sweat coldly.
I took out my cell phone and looked at the time. It was about forty minutes before the ferry left. I got up to ask the girl if she was on time—an unnecessary question in Norway—but it was an excuse to take a look at the parking lot. The car was gone. Where had those two gone?
The temptation to go out and check was strong, despite the rain and the blisters on my feet, but I resisted. They could have killed me first on the street and in there now. Few witnesses – who they could also liquidate – and the certainty of leaving undisturbed. The credit card used to rent the car would not have led to any existing person.
For the next forty minutes, until the ship arrived, I was left mulling over the latest events, because something didn't add up. By now I was one hundred percent convinced that my contact had been killed by the two people who were keeping an eye on me – because that was also clear and maybe they had been doing it since before I left Narvesen. There are no coincidences. So they had seen me talking to my colleague or, at least, they had seen him sit down next to me and leave a few seconds later. They knew who he was and seeing him approach a tourist and then walk away immediately afterwards had seemed suspicious to them. My contact had priority, because I was trapped in Måløy until 9 p.m., while he had definitely come there by car. So they had to kill him first. Why didn't he give me the message right away? Maybe because he knew he didn't have time and maybe he suspected he was being followed. Maybe he thought the bus station was a quieter place – and in fact it was always deserted, had no houses around it and allowed you to escape quickly. Killing me on the street was dangerous, there was someone besides me and the police were already on alert because of the first murder. Killing me at the ticket office at the port was the same. And then, in these cases, you don't act rashly. The spy must be killed discreetly, no witnesses, no useless deaths, no innocent people involved. They call them silent deaths . No one ever saw or heard anything. No one was ever accused or tried.
A suspicion began to creep into my thoughts.
How had they spotted me? There weren't many people on the streets or at the port, I'd met ten at most in all. But they had their sights set on me . Did they have a description of me? A photo of me? Probably. We all had photos and descriptions of the agents to be liquidated. They were the X files , as if to say to put a cross over them. Macabre irony.
From afar I saw the ship arrive. I looked at the clock: it was 8:55 PM. Punctual as always. I stood up and slung my backpack over my shoulders. I risked a glance toward the square as I waved goodbye to the girl. The white car was parked on the side of the road again. But it was empty.
I calculated my chances of escaping death, but I quickly calmed down because the pier had filled up and there were at least twenty people out there now. They couldn't shoot me in the middle of all those people. But had they shot my colleague? I didn't know how he died.
The ferry was about a hundred meters from the dock when I saw the man I had met inside the ticket office. I pretended not to notice him and walked away to get closer to the platform and get ready to board. But just then I saw the driver of the car, who was watching me. What were they planning to do? I hoped they wouldn't get on with me, otherwise I would end my days on a ship on the Måløy-Selje route.
A line formed on the dock to board the ship, which arrived in a few minutes and unloaded the passengers. One of the crew, in uniform, stood in front of the entrance and checked the tickets. I was in line too, showed mine and slipped inside. Was I safe? Maybe.
I turned around, watching the last passengers board, but I could no longer see the two from the car. Had they gotten in too? I was scanning the entire port for the two killers when a hand fell on my shoulder and I went white.
I dropped my backpack to the ground and prepared to defend myself, when the man spoke. And in my language.
“You have to learn to distinguish friends from enemies,” he said, smiling from his six-foot-two stature.
In an instant, all the events of that cursed day began to flash before my eyes like a movie, each frame falling into place and undermining all the theories I had formulated.
“You got lucky this time,” the man said again, reaching out and handing me a book. “It’s for V.,” he added. “Good luck.”
He jumped onto the dock just before the Norwegian closed the gate and disappeared from my sight, disappearing among the people who had just disembarked from the ferry. I went in and looked for a place to sit, as secluded as possible. I sat down, threw my backpack on the ground and the ship moved, sliding across the surface of the sea in the silence of that Norwegian summer.
I looked at the book that contained the message for V. It was The Perfect Spy by John le Carré. I smiled. This time the timing of that involuntary sarcasm must have been a coincidence.