The Discordant Note (10 page)

“Wait Miss ... first of all, I'm not questioning you, it will be up to the magistrate ... and second thing ... you really want to know what we talked about out there?”.

“I'm curious, tell me”.

“About the finding of a special broomstick ... we could say that this broomstick has lost a lot of its original color to the advantage of red, a very bright red ...”.

This sentence froze Barbara Aversa for good; this time, it was not enough to lower her eyes to keep the illusion of having the chance to control the events. In the throes of sighs and nervous tics, she let the commissioner continue the story.

“Near where I live, Miss Aversa, a few days ago, something that should never happen, actually did happen; and the whole thing took place while I was a stone's throw from there, comfortably lying on my own bed; that something happened to Ralf Brandenburg, an almost world famous musician who had the habit of helping children and young people in trouble, because they’re orphaned or abandoned, by offering all he got, his own art I mean, in order to give some of them the chance to emerge and to make their own way in life”.

“You’re wrong about that, Commissioner; Ralf used to offer himself beyond his art ...”.

“I understood that by encountering those who knew him ... in any case, among his pupils, many years ago ... I don’t know the exact year yet, but I think Mother Alberta will tell me soon ... I was saying ... one day a girl named Barbara was taken to the Master’s house because she had a special musical talent, then the girl grew up, she had her own experiences and dreamed to marry someone one day and build her own family ... she continued to take music lessons from Ralf Brandenburg; the Master failed to realize how the young woman, had been secretly in love with him”.

Convulsive sighs interrupted from time to time the story of the commissioner.

“... Until one day she decided to confess her love to the Master ... secretly, the way he liked certain things to be done, with a love letter; then began an exchange of letters, until the girl, now also in the grip of jealousy, began to investigate the fact that Brandenburg could have another relationship, maybe even lurking in front of his house, and it was during one of those stakeouts that the girl we are talking about noticed another woman leaving the house ... a young, tall, brunette girl, who could not be a student because there were no classes in the morning and ...”.

“He already ... I mean, I already knew ...”.

“No! You did know anything, otherwise the Master would be still alive ... because the girl who left Brandenburg’s home that Tuesday morning, got on a taxi and went away, is his own daughter ... the one he had many years ago and then   abandoned ... just that you could not know this, dear Miss Aversa ... so you did spend a few days and then decided to show up at the Master's house for a clarification, you did it by wearing the same kind of clothes you did this morning, jeans and T-shirt. Once inside, your desire for explanations was overwhelmed by anger, so you pretended to go into the kitchen, maybe to drink a glass of water, and when you returned to him, you did it with the only weapon you’d been able to find around there in your hand, a broomstick”.

“Actually I asked Ralf to play our song, the one I had learned as a child ... and then I ...”.

“Then you killed him, Miss! When you realized what you did, the first thing you did was rummaging in the drawers, looking for the one he kept the letters in, then you got rid of those you wrote to him; in a white envelope, indeed, we found we did realize something was missing ... but  you did not touch the others, even those written in German by who must have been his lover, I guess you don’t speak German, do you, Barbara?”.

“No, I don’t ... but I heard that girl greeting Ralf as she left, I realized ...”.

“You don’t know anything about German, because if you knew you would have understood, reading those letters, that those words were not written by a lover on fire, but they actually were loving thoughts for a father who had been absent for too long”.

“If only he had told me”.

“Why didn’t you ask him instead? You did commit a terrible crime, and did it only relying on appearances, on what seemed but was not”.

“May I ask you a question, Commissioner, before you put the handcuffs?”.

“Ask”.

“Did you figured the whole thing out that day? That morning when we met in front of Ralf’s house?”.

“No, Barbara, that day I did not understand anything, but then going on ... I started to reconstruct the events ... I realized that when you returned home, because of the shock for what you had done, you did realize that you had left something behind; when you got home, Miss, you realized that the letters you had stolen were only a part of those you had written to Ralf, the most touching letters, the Master had stored them somewhere else, and it is for this reason that a few hours after the murder, you returned to the crime scene, but it was too late, the police was already there and you’ve not been able to make up better excuse to justify your presence that blathering something about phantom lessons but ... you play the violin, right?”.

“Yeah, how do you know?”.

“I understood five minutes ago, looking at your desk ... right there, near the printer ... the papers all have a violin on the

cover ... but that day when we met, you showed up without your instrument, at least I did not notice in your hands or on the scooter either”.

The commissioner then turned his gaze out again, looking for Gianni Piazza’s; he motioned him to warn the colleagues who were probably lurking in the area.

At that moment, both understood that the discussion was indeed finished; Barbara Aversa handed her fists out, as if to be handcuffed, but Germano dissuaded her, and with a gesture of his head asked her to follow him outside.

Once they had past the threshold, the eyes of the two policemen crossed again, and Piazza approached his boss’ ear to say something”.

“Parisi called me two minutes ago, they found the letters, Commissioner ... they were inside the piano ...”.

“Has he added something else?”.

“Yes, that judging from the words they found written there, the girl will need a good lawyer”.

Barbara Aversa never stopped, all the way to the police station, to turn a defiant look to Vincent Germano; only once they were alone again, she decided to speak.

“You’ve gone far enough, Commissioner, with your assumptions, but the broomstick ... it’s impossible you’ll be able to find it ...”.

“We will, do not worry about that ... before I forget ... I want to reveal you that soon you will be delivered a fine for no parking, the date, time and place where you got it, I think you already know ...”.

Wednesday, 10
^th
July

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T
he first call of the day was to Mother Alberta, primarily to make her desist from the research on the archives that would have definitely engaged her for days, but also to ask for some more information on that Barbara Aversa, who had in that place the chance to play her best trump but then she threw it all, dramatically, to the wind.

Germano was going to make the second phone call, but then decided to lower the handset to seek, through the drawers of his desk, a piece of paper that did not have the header of the Police; the recipient of those few lines was probably already aware of the latest developments on the case.

The note read as follows:
Many philosophers continually repeat that life is made ​​of encounters and that’s always worthwhile to experience them; I think it is true, even when two people meet again at a distance of many years, in spite of their meeting is short, too short.

Germano then inserted the paper inside an envelope and began to write down the name of the addressee, Corinna Adler.

The Phantom of the Commissioner

A murderer’s enigma

The Shadow of the Hound

An imperfect frame

Horoscope

Never more than twice

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