Also by Donato Carrisi

The Whisperer

The Vanished Ones

The Lost Girls of Rome

The Hunter of the Dark

The Girl in the Fog

Into the Labyrinth

LITTLE, BROWN

First published in Italy in 2018 by Longanesi

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Little, Brown

Copyright © Donato Carrisi 2018

Translation © Katherine Gregor 2022

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-4087-1460-7

Little, Brown

An imprint of

Little, Brown Book Group

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

An Hachette UK Company

www.hachette.co.uk

www.littlebrown.co.uk

Contents

ENIGMA

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

PASCAL

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

JOSHUA

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

ALICE

27

28

29

Acknowledgements

To Antonio, my son,
my continuity

To Luigi Bernabò,
my friend

The call to the police was recorded on 23 February at 7.47 p.m. A woman’s distressed voice, from a mobile phone, asking that a patrol car be sent to an isolated farm some fifteen kilometres from the city.

A violent thunderstorm was raging over the area.

When the operator asked the nature of the emergency, the woman replied that a man had trespassed into the farm and was standing outside, in the rain and the dark. Her husband had gone out to persuade him to leave but the intruder was refusing. He was just standing there, silent, staring at the house.

The woman was unable to describe the stranger because her position and the torrential rain meant that she could only see him clearly during flashes of lightning. She said he’d arrived in an old green station wagon and that her two little girls were scared.

The operator took the address, assured the woman that someone would be sent to check it out but also told her that, owing to the adverse weather conditions, they were currently swamped with calls for help because of road accidents and flooding. She would therefore have to be patient.

The first available patrol car wasn’t free until five the following morning, over nine hours later. The police officers took a long time to reach the farm, partly because a stream had burst its banks, flooding the road in several places.

Shortly after dawn, the scene that awaited the two officers was one of calm. A traditional timber farmhouse, painted white, with a silo for storing apples alongside. A giant sycamore cast its shadow over the farmyard. A rocking chair stood on the porch and there were two identical pink bicycles next to the tool shed. The letter box, painted scarlet, bore the inscription ANDERSON FAMILY. Nothing to suggest anything untoward. Except perhaps the silence, disturbed only by the constant barking of a mongrel tied with a long lead to a kennel.

The officers called out to the residents but there was no response. They assumed that as there was no one at home, perhaps they were no longer needed. Just to be sure, before turning back, one of the officers climbed the two steps to the porch, knocked on the door and noticed that it was only partly closed. He peeked inside and saw chaos.

After radioing headquarters for authorisation, the police officers went into the house to investigate.

They found tables and chairs knocked over, torn furnishings and shards of glass on the floor. The situation upstairs was even worse.

There was blood everywhere. In the bedrooms, pillows and sheets had been drenched in it, now dried. The family’s belongings – a slipper, a hairbrush and the faces of the dolls in the girls’ bedroom – were covered in blood spatter. There were trails on the floor and handprints smeared on the walls, signs of a desperate attempt to escape. The officers were looking at the scene of a bloodbath. But what troubled them most was what they could not find. The bodies were missing.

All that was left of the family members – a father, a mother and eight-year-old twins – were their photos, either standing in frames or hanging on the walls. From these smiling pictures, the Andersons had witnessed their own slaughter.

By eight o’clock, the police were swarming over this remote location in full force. While teams of investigators, aided by cadaver dogs, combed the surrounding countryside for any trace of human remains, a forensics team were analysing the crime scene in an attempt to reconstruct what had occurred. At the same time, an full-scale manhunt was launched, focusing on the stranger Mrs Anderson had described so vaguely. All that was known about him was his sex. There wasn’t even a broad description or any detail that could lead to an identification. The only useful piece of information was the green station wagon the woman had mentioned, but without a licence plate or a model, this couldn’t be considered a proper lead.

By midday, rumours of what had happened and what was about to happen had reached the media. It immediately hit the headlines. By dinner time, Karl, Frida and young Eugenia and Carla had gone from being an anonymous little family to the protagonists of a sensational crime that was keeping millions of people in suspense.

The mystery of the vanished family.

What made the story even more compelling was the fact that the Andersons had moved to the country and renounced technology. They had no electricity, no internet and not even a phone. The one exception was a mobile phone, strictly for emergencies, which had been used only once to call for help. The macabre details of the case – in addition to the certainty that there was a monster still at large – led to widespread panic. Everyone was terrified the killer would strike again. Pressure was mounting for a rapid conclusion to the investigation and the arrest of the person responsible.

However, the police had little to go on. Despite the resources and manpower deployed, the only thing the investigators could be certain of was that the murderer had taken the bodies away in his station wagon, though they hadn’t a clue what he had done with them. There wasn’t much hope of a swift resolution.

Although the investigators thought it probable that by now the intruder would have disposed of the vehicle, they combed through all available security footage recorded during the hours just before and after Mrs Anderson’s call. Given that it was an old-fashioned model, it ought to stand out. Moreover, a special helpline was set up so that people could report sightings of old green estate cars. Predictably, this resulted in countless – and for the most part baseless – calls from local residents.

With one exception.

In the late afternoon, an anonymous caller reported seeing a 1997 green Volkswagen Passat parked in a disused warehouse near the old abattoir. When a team of officers, along with the dog squad, showed up to check the vehicle, they saw through the windows that the upholstery was saturated in blood. Expecting a gruesome discovery, they opened the spacious boot but, once again, there was no sign of the bodies.

As officers set about cordoning off the area to allow Forensics to work on this new crime scene, the dogs suddenly started to bark. They had sensed a presence in the abattoir.

Within thirty minutes, the entire area was off limits and, shortly afterwards, Special Forces raided the complex. It was a no-expense-spared operation with dozens of men equipped with state-of-the-art gear. The teams separated and combed through every room and every possible hiding place. The abandoned building echoed with the tramp of boots, the barking of dogs and the shouts of the raiders, until one of the officers radioed that there was ‘something on the third floor’.

The units assembled at the indicated spot. In a dark room, amid the carcasses of old computers and other obsolete electronic equipment, there was a man.

He was standing, strangely motionless, facing a wall of blank monitors. He wasn’t wearing any clothes. He raised his arms in surrender and slowly turned towards the officers, who were aiming their assault weapons at him and blinding him with their flashlights. Besides the peculiarity of his hideout, the police were immediately struck by two things. It was difficult to make out how old he was and his entire body, including his face and bald head, was covered in tattoos.

Numbers.

The man put up no resistance and let himself be handcuffed without a word. There was a small, bloodstained sickle next to him. The murder weapon, presumably.

The capture of the principal suspect took place just over forty-eight hours after Mrs Anderson’s call for help. Though initially confounded, investigators had achieved a rapid and unexpected solution to the case – albeit brought about by a tip-off.

The chief of police publicly thanked the nameless informer for aiding the law and stood before a forest of microphones to declare that another victory in the fight against evil had been claimed. The Andersons’ gruesome deaths were by now taken for granted, despite the absence of bodies. With the tattooed man in custody, law and order had been restored, and the public could breathe a sigh of relief. Their focus shifted from the perpetrator to the victims, with an outpouring of compassion and prayers for the Anderson family, wherever they might be.

Little did they know that the time for fear had only just begun.

ENIGMA

1

The letter arrived punctually, as it did every February.

Its contents were more or less the same every time. She was informed that the clinical situation was unaltered and that for the time being there were no significant signs to indicate how it would evolve. Whoever it was who wrote the letter always concluded with the same words:

‘The patient’s general condition remains incurable.’

A sentence that was a subtle request to decide whether or not to prolong assisted breathing and artificial feeding for another year or else put an end to this vegetating life once and for all.

Mila put the letter in the drawer and looked up at the view outside the kitchen window. The setting sun had strange grey tones in its reflection on the lake and, in the wooded field a few metres from the pier, Alice was chasing after leaves in the wind. Winter had stripped the two lime trees dominating the house some time ago and she wondered where those dried leaves came from – perhaps from the dense forest that surrounded the clear mirror of green water.

Alice was wearing a thick jumper and a scarf that fluttered along with her red hair. Her breath condensed in the cold air but she looked happy. Meanwhile, Mila was enjoying the warmth inside the house. She was preparing vegetable stew for dinner and there was an apple cake in the oven, which filled the room with a sweet aroma of sugar and cinnamon. She had discovered an unexpected habit over the past few months. She, who had considered meals as energy fuel for the body, was now actually deriving taste from food. No doubt it had come as even more of a surprise to Alice, since cooking was something the other mothers did – not hers.

There had been many changes over the past year. It hadn’t just been a matter of taking up new habits but starting a new life.

Mila had been in great danger during her last investigation. Until then, the prospect of dying on the job had never fazed her. It was a risk every police officer had to factor in. But after a brush with death she had reconsidered the issue and suddenly been forced to ask herself a simple question that had never occurred to her before.

If she died, what would become of Alice? It was hard enough for her daughter as it was, growing up without a father. So Mila Vasquez had decided to quit the force and abandon the mission she had devoted herself to for what felt like a century: finding missing people.

She had never thought of herself as an ordinary police officer. Moreover, she had never been an ordinary person, else she would never have chosen to hunt shadows. Mila had been sixteen when she realised that she was different. Unlike everyone she knew, she was incapable of empathy. It was something she was ashamed of for a long time, something that prevented her from having normal relationships and made her feel like an outsider. When, at twenty-five, she finally mustered the courage to tell a psychiatrist about it, he had given her condition a name: alexithymia – a kind of emotional illiteracy. Mila was unable to relate to others in an emotional way, and wasn’t capable of identifying or describing her own feelings either. It was as if she was emotionally bereft. Some called it ‘a frigid soul’.

In time, Mila understood the reason for this obscure gift and realised she was a portal, endowed with access to a dimension of shadows and evil. Once opened, though, this door could never again be shut.

I come from the darkness. And to the darkness I must sometimes return . . .

As a policewoman, she’d considered her condition a precious ally because it allowed her to handle her cases with clear-headed detachment. And this was useful particularly when dealing with the disappearance of minors, where a high degree of emotional involvement was liable to impair the objectivity of an investigator. Her colleagues were often tempted to give up rather than face the terrible reality almost always lurking at the tail end of an investigation.

Mila knew it: searching for a missing child was like chasing a black rainbow. It wasn’t a crock of gold that awaited you at the end, but just a silent monster, greedy for blood and innocence.

Alexithymia was both her curse and her armour. But there was a price to pay.

The lack of empathy gave her a dangerous affinity to the monsters who fed on the suffering of their victims, unable to feel sorry for them. In order to be different from them, Mila had often resorted to the secret help of a razor blade. Small acts of self-harm she used in order to trigger inside her a sense of someone else’s pain. The scars marking her body were a testimony of her constant effort to identify with the missing people she was investigating and create an empathic contact with them. The physical pain stood in for that of the soul and made her feel less guilty about her indifference.

Aside from those acts of self-harm, the only time she had felt something – something human – was when she was pregnant with Alice. An emotional experience which, sadly for them both, had ended with the birth. After that, Mila had never been able to be either a good mother or a bad one. She simply didn’t possess the right tools for that. Her care for Alice had been no different to what one could give a plant. And yet she had looked after her daughter as well as possible – possible for her, naturally.

All that was now in the past, however. A year earlier, Mila had decided that the moment had come to break the deadlock of her heart and soul. So she had rented this house by the lake and escaped from the world with Alice.

It hadn’t been easy. They still had to get used to each other. But, little by little, they discovered that they weren’t total strangers, even though Mila often had to fight the temptation to hide in the bathroom, unwrap one of the razor blades concealed in a packet in the cabinet behind the mirror, and inflict a wound on a part of her body that was already marked. A way of letting not only blood gush out but also a jolt of pain to make her feel she was human after all – because sometimes she had doubts about it.

Now, on a cold late-February evening, Mila was watching her daughter having fun on her own in the field, and couldn’t help wondering how much there was of her in Alice. The girl was ten years old. Soon, hormones would be turning her life upside down. Her innocent games would be cast aside without regrets, with deliberate ruthlessness. She, like everyone else, would suddenly forget what it means to be a child. However, as adults know well, she would nevertheless miss these days for the rest of her life.

But that wasn’t what worried Mila. What she feared was that, along with adolescence, frigidity of the soul might also arrive. There was no scientific evidence that alexithymia was hereditary, but case studies seemed to suggest it. The alternative was that Alice should take after her father, but Mila could not accept that either.

Not that man. Not him, she thought, remembering the letter from the hospital.

She never uttered his name. That name didn’t even deserve to be thought. Alice never said it either.

As though summoned by her mother’s gaze, the girl turned towards her. From behind the windowpane, Mila gestured at her to come indoors.

‘There’s a squirrel’s den in the tree,’ Alice announced as she stepped in, chilled.

Mila put a blanket over her shoulders because the dampness in the wintry air had clung to her. Another mother would have welcomed her daughter into a warm hug, but Alice didn’t have another mother; she had her.

‘Any sign of Finz?’ she asked.

Alice shrugged her shoulders.

Mila worried about her indifference to the recent disappearance of their cat. Was it a sign of alexithymia?

‘What’s for dinner?’ the girl asked, changing the subject.

‘Vegetable stew and apple cake.’

Alice looked at her, puzzled. ‘If I eat the stew, may I take the cake into the shelter?’

It was what she called the hut made of blankets she’d built herself at the top of the stairs. She spent a lot of time there, reading by torchlight or listening to music on an old iPod – recently, she’d become obsessed with Elvis Presley.

‘We’ll see,’ Mila replied. She never wavered when it came to granting exceptions to house rules.

‘Do you think he’ll come this weekend?’

She was taken aback. In the past, Alice would seldom ask but it was already the third time she’d done it this month. She wondered why the girl had got it into her head that her father would come and visit them. Mila had explained that this wouldn’t happen, that he’d been in a coma for years and would never wake up again. At least not in this life. Perhaps only in hell. Yet Alice had created this fantasy that sooner or later he would appear and they’d spend time together, like a real family.

‘It won’t happen,’ Mila said for the umpteenth time, and saw the light go out of her daughter’s eyes.

Alice huddled in the blanket and sat in an old armchair by the fireplace. She never insisted. Mila knew things she wished she didn’t, things nobody should know. Unspeakable things about human beings. Things about the harm some people do to their fellow creatures. And Alice must not discover that her father was one of those sadists – it was too soon. She’d made up her mind that her daughter would discover the crime behind her birth – and the evil in the world – as late as possible. She had to protect her.

Since she couldn’t close the portal to the dark dimension, she had severed all links with the past. Even though she always kept her pistol in the drawer by her bed, she was no longer a hunter of evildoers. She’d convinced herself that if she no longer sought the dark, the dark would no longer come after her.

Just as she was formulating these thoughts, however, she noticed a slight change in the landscape outside the window. The sun had almost set but Mila saw its faint reflection in the windscreen of an anonymous dark saloon driving along the lakeside road.

She felt a familiar tickling at the base of her neck – as well as an inkling that this unexpected visit would bring something unpleasant.

The saloon car with tinted windows pulled up in front of the house, next to her Hyundai, and stayed there with the engine running.

Mila watched through the French window but nothing happened for a few seconds. Then she saw the back door open and Joanna Shutton got out, motioned the driver to stay in the car and rearranged the long blonde hair that cascaded softly on the shoulders of her camel-coloured coat. Then she headed to the front door, wobbling as her stilettos sank into the damp soil of the lawn.

If the Judge had taken the trouble to come here personally, Mila thought, it must be a really important matter. She was carrying a small folder.

The wind carried a waft of perfume towards Mila as she opened the door. For a moment, she felt uneasy, greeting the Judge in a tracksuit and slipper socks.

Shutton gave her a reproachful look and a forced smile. ‘I didn’t wish to intrude,’ she said, the attempt at justification unconvincing. ‘I would have warned you I was coming but we couldn’t find your new phone number.’

‘We don’t have a phone.’

The Judge looked at her as if Mila had just uttered a blasphemy but refrained from commenting. For her part, Mila maintained her position in the doorway. She wanted to make it immediately clear that there was a boundary between her old life and this one, and she wasn’t about to step aside and allow that line to be crossed.

Shutton held her stony gaze. The Chief of the Federal Police Department was a determined woman who did not allow anyone to get the better of her, but she was clever enough to know when she needed to negotiate. After all, that was one of the reasons they’d nicknamed her ‘the Judge’.

‘I’ve come a long way, Vasquez. So before you send me away, could I at least ask you for a cup of tea?’

Mila stared at her, decided to hear what Shutton had to say but solemnly promised herself that she wouldn’t let herself get involved. After tea, she would send her back where she’d come from.

She turned off the gas ring under the vegetable stew and, since dinner was to be delayed, covered the pan with a lid. Then she took the apple cake out of the oven and put it to cool on the windowsill. She also sent Alice upstairs.

‘Why can’t I stay?’ the girl protested. They never had visitors, so the presence of a stranger was a tempting novelty.

‘Because I want you to run yourself a hot bath,’ Mila replied. ‘You have to go to school tomorrow.’

‘May I listen to some Elvis in the shelter first?’

‘All right,’ she conceded, chiefly because she wanted to make sure Alice wouldn’t hear whatever Shutton had come to tell her.

Mila then set about making the tea, poured a single cup and carried it through to the living room where the Judge was sitting. Shutton took a small sip of the scalding tea and immediately put it down on the coffee table in front of the sofa. The mysterious folder was lying next to her, closed.

‘It’s lovely here,’ she said, looking around. The fire was crackling and gave the rustic room a cosy, amber hue. ‘My father loved fishing. He had a hut by the lake and when we were children, he’d make my sister and me spend endless weekends in the woods.’

Mila couldn’t picture Shutton in trousers and walking boots. Maybe her overt femininity was the Judge’s response to a father who’d wanted a son.

‘We don’t go fishing. My daughter and I are vegetarians.’

The Judge offered no response to this, maintaining her stoic expression as Mila stared at her in silence, wishing she would stop stalling and ask the favour she’d come all this way for.

‘You know, I was very surprised when you decided to quit,’ the Judge said. ‘I didn’t think cops like you could just walk away from the job.’

‘Did you miss me?’ Mila replied provokingly. Now she was a civilian, she was free to be impudent.

‘Many people were sorry to see you go.’

‘But not you.’

‘True,’ Shutton freely admitted.

Still no mention of the folder, Mila observed. This continued stalling suggested the Judge couldn’t afford to leave with a refusal. She was curious to find out what her guest was after.

‘I don’t see a television,’ the Judge said, indicating the furniture.

Mila shook her head.

‘No internet connection either?’ Shutton asked, astounded.

‘We have books. And a radio.’

‘In that case you will have heard the news over the past couple of days.’ And before Mila could reply, she jumped in with a name: ‘Anderson . . . does that ring any bells?’

‘You’ve got the tattooed man; I thought it was over.’

The Judge gave a faint smile, uncrossed her legs and recrossed them the other way. ‘There’s enough blood at the crime scene and in the car to assume it was a massacre,’ she said, trying to appear confident. ‘The fact that the subject was in possession of the murder weapon made the prosecutor’s job much easier, so he charged him with multiple homicide without hesitation.’

‘At this stage, I don’t think any lawyer could get your guy out of the mess he’s got himself into,’ Mila said to settle the matter. ‘So what are you worried about?’

‘It’s not that simple,’ Shutton replied. ‘The place where we arrested him had a camping bed, a few clothes, a camping stove and tinned food. He lived like a tramp surrounded by the carcasses of old computers. It’s because of that and the numbers that the media started calling him “Enigma”.’

‘Where did he get them?’

Shutton frowned. ‘What?’

‘The computers.’

‘Who cares? He must have picked them up somewhere, either from rubbish bins or the abandoned offices near the old abattoir: the place looks like an electrical appliances dump.’ Shutton sipped her tea again but only to steady her nerves. ‘The media want to build a story around him, but I won’t allow them to make a celebrity out of some madman who probably goes around in a tinfoil hat to prevent extraterrestrials from reading his thoughts.’

Mila immediately realised that Shutton was evading the real issue. Something else was worrying her. ‘You still don’t know who he is, do you?’

The Judge confirmed it: ‘There’s no match in the database, no record of his fingerprints or DNA. But the real mystery is, despite media reports describing his tattoos, nobody has come forward to identify him. Actually – would you believe it? – it appears no one has ever set eyes on him.’ Shutton shook her head in disbelief. ‘How can someone covered in numbers from head to toe – including the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands – go unnoticed?’ She started a list, counting each item off on her fingers. ‘No one has ever seen him or taken a picture of him, even unintentionally. There are security cameras in every corner of the city, but not one of them has ever captured him. There’s no trace of him anywhere except in the warehouse where we arrested him after the anonymous tip-off. Where did he suddenly appear from? Why was he sheltering there? Where did he get the things he needed? How the hell did he get his food? And how did he make himself invisible all this time?’

‘And, naturally, he’s not saying anything,’ Mila concluded.

‘Not a word since we discovered him.’

‘And so there’s a chance that the Andersons’ bodies may never be found . . . ’

Shutton fell silent for a few seconds. A silence intended to convey that Mila had hit the nail on the head.

‘The numbers are the only lead we have,’ she admitted. And with that, she finally picked up the folder, opened it and began setting out on the coffee table in front of Mila a series of detailed photos of the man’s body.

‘We know that he tattooed himself. From the condition of the ink, we also know that he did it over an extended period . . . At the moment, we’re trying to work out if there’s some meaning concealed in these sequences or if it’s just the fruit of some absurd obsession.’

Mila sensed that although Shutton was trying to cast him as a madman, she was afraid of what the man might really be.

‘Is someone trying to put together a psychological profile?’ Mila was surprised at hearing her own voice uttering the question. She had sworn to herself that she wouldn’t get involved, but for a moment her hunting instinct had got the better of her.

Shutton took this small concession as a point in her favour and rushed to answer. ‘The number of traces he left behind – which incriminate him without the shadow of a doubt – suggest a disorganised perpetrator who acted impulsively . . . And yet he’s so cold, impassive and self-controlled. He’s so docile and calm, you’d almost think he’d planned it this way from the beginning and is laughing at us while we’re getting all worked up trying to understand.’

Mila began to study the pictures on the coffee table without picking them up. The numbers, all of one or two digits at most, covered practically every millimetre of the man’s skin. They were different sizes. Some were smaller, others larger or bolder. There was method in this process carried out over the years, a meticulousness that troubled her deeply. A shudder went up her back.

‘Why have you come to me?’ she asked, looking away from the photos on the table as though trying to rid herself of the images. ‘I don’t see how I can help you.’

‘Vasquez, listen—’

‘No, I won’t listen,’ Mila said abruptly, nipping the negotiation in the bud. ‘I know what you’re after: you need someone to help you find the Andersons’ bodies. Perhaps a missing-persons seeker who left the police some time ago, so in the event she fails it won’t reflect badly on the force.’ And who better to divert the attention of the media than a policewoman who miraculously survived the last investigation of her career. Mila was disgusted. ‘In case you haven’t yet realised, Mrs Shutton, I’m not going to help you. Because I’m done with this kind of shit for ever.’

‘I’m not here to ask you to find the Andersons,’ the Judge stated calmly.

Mila was lost for words.

‘Vasquez, I’ve come here because you’re probably the only one who can find out who Enigma is.’

While Mila stood gaping at her, Shutton began rummaging through the photographs.

‘Among the tattooed numbers we found a single word. On the left arm, mixed up with the sequences of digits and well hidden in the crook of the elbow, this was tattooed . . . ’

As soon as the Judge unearthed the picture, she handed it to her. After a brief hesitation, Mila took it and felt the blood drain from her face.

Four letters. One name. Hers.