On his way back from the main corridor he noticed senior officer, Sandra Milani, coming from his office, holding some sheets of paper in her hands. Rushing his steps, in order to reach her, he called out, “Milani!”
At his call, she turned herself in the direction of Maurizio’s voice, and opening up into a bright smile she paced toward him. Her eyes shone with excitement as if she was burning from the need to tell what she’d found out.
“I have some very interesting news for you, but let’s go to your office, we need some space,” she raised mid-air the bundle of papers she carried.
“Fantastic, because after a great coffee at the cafeteria, I’m not ready for bad news,” Maurizio replied as they kept walking toward his room.
Closing the door behind him, he gestured for Senior officer Milani to take a seat at the table he had in the middle of the room, where he generally hosted brainstorming sessions with his team.
“So, tell me what you got. I’m all ears and eyes,” he commenced as they were both seated at the table. Carefully placing the papers on the desk, her hands spread the sheets like the cards of a fortune teller, and with a grin, she took a deep breath before starting to explain.
“I have two different pieces of news, and all of them are very interesting. Let’s start with the one you asked a while back. I have been searching the call log of Luciano Calvani for the last six months. Like every young man, he has quite a long list of friends. However, I focused on two particular numbers, which I presume they belong to the same person.”
Taking a pause to let her words sink in, she turned one of the sheets closer to Maurizio. “You see, this is a Hungarian mobile telephone number, belonging to his girlfriend, Ms. Fazekas’ daughter. If we check the frequency they call each other, we can immediately notice there are periods where those calls have a break.” Her finger moving through the log to the places she’d been marked with a red pen. “During those periods, he received and called this prepaid number. Does it ring a bell to you?”
She watched Maurizio carefully as he was staring at the sheets she gave him. Like under the effect of a hypnotic order, he froze for a second and slowly raised a finger to the air as if that call log had something familiar.
He stood from his chair and went to his computer, checking another call log he had saved and selecting a part of it, he sent it to print. With the printed sheet, followed by the curious glance of Senior officer Milani, he reached the table and compared the two papers.
“It just doesn’t ring a bell—it’s like the whole damn St. Peter’s belltower complex on Christmas Eve. The same prepaid number called lately also Ms. Fazekas, but not before.” Maurizio’s heart started to race as his adrenaline pumped in high gear.
He grabbed one pen from the pen tray at the center of the table and swung it before landing on the paper. “This is the telephone number of Irina, even without the need of asking for any confirmation. I don’t have any proof about it yet, but I bet ten years of my life, that it was hers.”
Senior officer Milani giggled at his expression, “Be careful what you bet on!”
“If this was hers, we need to find out from where exactly she was calling from. This is simply a call log displaying telephone numbers. I need to understand which operator was connected to for the roaming. Was it an Italian one? Was it Hungarian or whatever other country? We cannot get the name of the person who owned the sim card, but we can find it out in many other ways.”
Maurizio stood from the chair once again and paced the room, keeping the paper in his hand. “If this was her number, and she was in Italy this means she was here in October for a week; in December before Christmas for another week. What strikes me as odd, is why Luciano told me he hadn’t seen her since October?”
“Another question is, why didn’t he receive any calls from any of her numbers during January and February? Did she use another telephone number? Did they both use other foreign prepaid cards during that period? Did they keep silent? Why? Two months of not speaking to each other is quite strange for two young lovers...” Senior officer Milani commented still following Maurizio in his walk.
At her remark, Maurizio stopped abruptly as if an imaginary wall materialized in front of him. “What about the emails? Did you check the messages through their email? We need them. Let’s ask Leonardo. He should have a copy of the hard drive of Luciano’s computer, and they should still be on that log.”
Without hesitating a second further, Maurizio hurried toward the door, determined to find out that little detail in the shortest time possible. It was half past noon, and people were either going to the canteen for lunch or returning from there. Maurizio didn’t feel his stomach complaining. He wouldn’t have had the time to eat, and besides, he wouldn’t have been able to stay away from the case.
Senior officer Milani followed him, trying to keep up with the speed as he was walked the corridor. She was trying to avoid stumbling into other people, meanwhile in Maurizio’s case, it was the ones who tried to stay out of his path.
Taking the car to the Forensic Department, he stormed into the room where Leonardo was working, “I need Luciano’s email log!” he demanded.
Not impressed, as usual, Leonardo hardly raised his eyes from the computer, “Hey, easy does it, man!”
Narrowing his eyes, hardly containing
