Free Death and the Olive Grove by Marco Vichi Page A

up out of bed at six, without having slept. He still had that chilling adventure with Gavino on his mind. The ashtray emitted a nasty, sickly-sweet smell. He went and emptied it in the dustbin in the kitchen, then returned to the bedroom. He opened the window and looked out, shivering from the cold. It was still dark outside. A very light rain was falling, tiny little drops that glittered like diamonds in the light of the street lamps. He lit a cigarette and rested his elbows on the sill, thinking of the monster who had killed Valentina. Maybe the killer, too, was awake and looking at the same low sky, the same blanket of dark clouds. He tried to imagine the man. Perhaps he was lonely, rejected by all, half mad, and had killed on impulse, for reasons only God knew. And now he carried that horrible secret inside, crushed by guilt, unable to understand the monstrous force that welled up in him at certain moments. Or perhaps not. Maybe he was pleased with what he had done and was already planning another murder. Or maybe he was neither devastated by guilt nor pleased with himself, and simply carried on with his life, indifferent to everything. It was anybody’s guess.
    The inspector blew his smoke against the sky and ran a hand over his face. His brain was weary. He wished he could detach his head in order to stop thinking. He flicked the butt into the street below and lit another. It was disgusting and tasted like metal. Leaving the window open, he went and lay down in bed. To distract himself, he started studying the details of the room. He knew intimately every crack and stain in the plaster, the areas where the paint was flaking off the shutters, the cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling, the cardboard wedges under the bookcase, the worn-out spines of his books, which never changed place over the years. Sometimes he liked seeing everything stay the same; at other times he couldn’t stand it. He blew the smoke forcefully out of his mouth …
    The desire to kill … Perhaps it had deep roots in the heart of every man. An irrational force, an ancestral legacy that smacked of the survival instinct. Or perhaps it was the wish to learn something about death, to see it with one’s own two eyes …
    He remembered the time he had killed a lizard as a little boy. He may have killed many more, but that was the one he remembered. It was summertime. The lizard was a few yards away from him, immobile at the foot of a pine tree, peacefully sunning itself. It was nice and big, and very green. He had taken aim with his slingshot, driven by a will he didn’t understand. He had let the elastic band go, and the stone had struck the lizard on the head, making it jump in the air. He had approached to look at it. The lizard lay on its back, a line of blood round its neck. Its belly was white and scaly, and its tail was still moving, as if it refused to die. He stood and watched it for several minutes, horrified and fascinated by that pointless death. The decision to kill had been entirely his own, and now he felt all the weight of that irremediable act on his shoulders, unable to understand why he had done it …
    In the two years of war following the Armistice, he had killed many Nazis, but at least he knew why. He had wanted to fight them face to face. That was why he had asked to join the San Marco Battalion after spending three years on boats and submarines. When April 1945 arrived, he had twenty-four notches carved in the butt of his machine gun, and they were only for SS men that he was certain he had personally killed. Looking at those dead bodies, he had felt something entirely different. Mostly nausea. Nausea for all those dead, for himself, for war.
    He snuffed out the fag-end and put his hands behind his head. He half-closed his eyes, to rest them. No, maybe the monster wasn’t awake after all. Maybe he was sleeping as he did every other night, normally, like one who has come home tired from work,