Free The Whisperer by Donato Carrisi

something that he wasn’t expecting.
    “We’d like you to follow us to headquarters, Mr. Bermann. Your logbook is missing from your documentation.”
    That’s strange, he had thought . I was sure I put it there . But then he had understood: the man with the balaclava had taken it out when he had been unconscious…And now here he was, in this little waiting room, enjoying the undeserved warmth of the breeze. They had shut him up in here after confiscating his car. Without knowing that the threat of an administrative sanction was the last of his worries. They were holed up in their offices, completely unaware, making decisions about things that no longer had any importance for him. How do you change the hierarchy of priorities for a man who no longer has anything to lose? His most urgent thought at the moment was that the caress of that breeze shouldn’t cease.
    Meanwhile he still had his eyes fixed on the car park and the comings and goings of the policemen. His car was still there, in full view. With its secret locked away in the boot. And no one noticed anything.
    As he reflected on the uniqueness of his situation, he noticed a squad of policemen coming back from their midmorning coffee break. Three men and two women, all in uniform. One of them seemed to be telling a story, and waved his arms about as he walked. When he finished, the others laughed. Alexander hadn’t heard a single word of the story, but the sound of laughter was contagious and he found himself smiling. It didn’t last long. The group passed close to his car. One of them, the tallest, suddenly stopped, letting the others continue on their own. He had noticed something.
    Alexander immediately spotted the expression that had formed on his face.
    The smell, he thought. He must have caught the smell .
    Without saying anything to his colleagues, the policeman started looking round. He sniffed the air, trying to find the faint trace that had for a moment put his senses on the alert. When he found it again, he turned towards the car next to him. He took a few steps in that direction, then froze by the closed boot.
    Alexander Bermann, seeing the scene, sighed with relief. He was grateful . Grateful for the coincidence that had brought him here, for the breeze that had been granted him and for the fact that he would not be the one who opened that damned boot.
    The caress of the wind subsided. Alexander got up from his seat by the window and took his mobile out of his pocket.
    The time had come to make a phone call .

6.
    D ebby. Anneke. Sabine. Melissa. Caroline.
    Mila silently repeated those names as she gazed through a pane of glass at the family members of the five identified victims, who had assembled in the morgue of the Institute of Legal Medicine. It was a gothic building with big windows, surrounded by bare parkland.
    There are two missing, was Mila’s obsessive thought. A father and a mother that we haven’t yet managed to find.
    They had to give a name to left hand number six. The girl Albert had tormented the most, with that cocktail of drugs to slow down death as painfully as possible.
    He wanted to enjoy the show .
    She thought again of the music teacher case, when she had freed Pablo and Elisa. And yet you rescued three, Sergeant Morexu had said, referring to the note found in the man’s diary. That name…
    Priscilla .
    Her boss was right: the little girl had been lucky. Mila became aware of a cruel link between her and the six victims.
    Priscilla had been chosen in advance by her executioner. It was only by chance that she had not become his prey. Where was she now? What was her life like? And was there a part of her, deep and hidden, that was aware of escaping a kind of horror like that?
    From the moment she had set foot in the music teacher’s house, Mila had rescued her. And she would never know. She would never be able to appreciate the gift of the second life that had been granted her.
    Priscilla, like Debby, Anneke, Sabine, Melissa,