And deadly was, indeed, he thought as he strolled toward the door.
The jeans and t-shirt she wore were an indicator of her desire to keep some sort of dress code even if she was staying at home. Apparently, she wasn’t waiting for any visitors.
“Good afternoon Ms. Fazekas, I’m sorry to turn up at your home unexpectedly without a previous call, but I have extremely urgent matters to discuss with you,” he commenced feeling almost certain she couldn’t be aware of the murder of her boyfriend. The press wasn’t yet allowed to broadcast the fact, but he was sure this would have been a detail, which would have been fixed.
“Generally, the Police came to my apartment, to question me about my work at the club.” She spoke calmly with a flirtatious tone in her voice. The foreign background was immediately clear by her accent, but she spoke a perfect Italian, actually better than some native speakers, as Maurizio could notice.
He nodded thoughtfully, closing the door behind him. “Ms. Fazekas, I’m afraid I am the bearer of bad news today, not only for you, but for many people. I would suggest you have a seat.” His eyes avoiding looking into hers, yet feeling her stare wrapping his whole being.
“Honestly, I can’t figure out a reason for your visit...” Despite the self-confidence and determination in her voice, a slight flicker, hardly detectable, and the imperceptible twitch of her lip, betrayed an internal turmoil.
“Early this morning, Mr. Calvani was found dead in his car. He had been murdered.”
Her eyes opened wide, and her face had turned bleached white. It was just for his prompt reflexes, and because he was expecting a similar reaction, that he could avoid her falling on the floor. Feeling her irregular breath on his cheek, he helped her on a sofa, before she broke down in tears.
“It can’t be true! Claudio can’t be dead! Who would have wanted to do something like that?” Her voice lost all the self-control and trembling like a puppy in the darkness, she sobbed, holding herself onto Maurizio, careless about the rules or any etiquette. The detective, at that precise moment, was her only hope.
He waited for some moments, before parting from her. Her behavior was understandable in her state of mind, and there wasn’t a good reason to lose every sense of humanity in such a case.
“We’d just spent a beautiful evening together, and we were planning to have a small holiday this weekend.” Searching her pockets, she found a tissue to wipe her tears, trying her best to gather some strength. “Only yesterday he came to pick me up and we went out for the evening.”
“You might have been the last person to see him alive, Ms. Fazekas. We will need your full cooperation to reconstruct what has happened to him. Where were you yesterday?” He slid a notebook from his jacket and prepared to write down all the details she could have remembered of the last hour of Claudio’s life.
She raised a hand to her mouth, sighing with a vacant expression in her face to cope with the turmoil caused by the unexpected news.
A few minutes passed in silence, as Maurizio patiently waited for her to react to the first shock and being able to tell something about what happened in the evening.
A light shake of her head and she turned her gaze at him. “As usual, he came to pick me up, and we had a drink before leaving here.” She tried to recall.
“Can you tell me where did you spend the evening? Did you go to a particular restaurant? To the cinema?” he asked, peering at her from time to time.
“Yes, we went to a restaurant close to the Colosseum. I can’t remember the name of the place; we just chose it at the moment; we didn’t book a place there. After a walk, we took the car once again and drove to the Venus Caprice. That’s the place where I used to work as a dancer.”
“You’re not working there anymore?” Admittedly he considered it strange, but on the other hand, if it were a question about his girlfriend, he would have preferred to have her dance only for himself instead of having her almost naked body in front of several other men.
“No. Claudio wanted me to quit my job. That was the reason why he bought me this apartment and offered me an allowance.” Her voice lowered in tone, almost as she realized what it could have meant having a boyfriend who doesn’t live with her but pays her expenses. She didn’t like the way people jumped to easy conclusions, considering her nothing more than a prostitute.
“What was the nature of the relationship between you and the victim?” Maurizio needed to go deeper into their strange romance, because he was sure the more he would dig, the more he would find out valuable information. Unfortunately, he was also convinced this meant bringing a lot of side stories to the surface.
“I met Claudio four years ago. I was working at the club for one year already, and I thought this would have been the place where I would spend most of my working career.” A short pause allowed her to swallow back the tears, which were impossible to hold back.
Recalling the preliminary chat, he had with Mrs. Martini and her son in the early morning, a detail jumped immediately in his mind. “Did you know he was married at that time?”
“Yes, I did. We started to frequent each other as friends, simply going for a walk every now and then, chatting about our lives and backgrounds. He was interested in my homeland, and we often spent our time together talking about the place where I was born and grew up. I was hoping one day we could have
