A Deadly Paradise Read Free

unusually large head, made even more noticeable by the wisps of gray hair combed across his balding pate. Getting along in years, sixty at least, Cenni observed, and dressed like a tourist on his first trip to Italy. He looks damned silly wearing those galoshes and carrying that oversized umbrella, Cenni concluded, mainly to relieve his irritation.
    “Exceptionally fine weather for this time of year,” Reimann began after they’d exchanged credentials and settled on first names. Cenni winced again at Reimann’s guttural Italian.
    “Perhaps we should speak in German, Dieter,” he responded, smiling to show his appreciation of Reimann’s efforts. He was rather smug about his fluency in German, having read all of Goethe while at university, and was completely unaware that his own awkward efforts might evoke a similar degree of suffering in Reimann.
    THE STORY THAT Reimann told in their thirty minutes together lacked credibility, Cenni decided, as he watched the German get into his car to return to Perugia. Something wrong there! When Cenni had expressed his desire to visit Rome to talk to the embassy staff, Reimann had insisted that such a visit was unnecessary:
    “You have everything you need,” Reimann said, pointing to the folder containing the police and postmortem reports. “All the evidence points to an enraged lover, if not directly to the woman she picked up when she was in Africa a year ago. She did that rather frequently, you know, picked up young women, especially so as she got older.” His face clouded over. “My government needs to know what happened to the papers that Jarvinia Baudler stole from the embassy. Even if it’s true that she was tortured before her death—although your medical examiner dismisses this as a possibility in the postmortem report—it couldn’t have been for those papers. They’re of no interest to anyone outside the German government.”
    “I still don’t understand, Dieter. What’s in these papers you keep harping on and, if they had nothing to do with her death, why are they so important? Who wants them? The Russians, perhaps?” he asked provocatively.
    Reimann laughed nervously. “Sorry Alex, but there’s only so much that I’m at liberty to share. This is strictly a German matter, nothing to do with anyone here in Italy, or anywhere else. It was an act of petty revenge, a protest against her forced retirement, no spies coming in from the cold, as you seem to be thinking. Only a very small number of people are aware of their contents. I’m not fully in the know myself,” he added with reluctance. “My charge is simply to keep them out of the hands of the wrong people, and that’s all I need to know—”
    Cenni interrupted. “But not all that I need to know! Italy’s not at loggerheads with Germany. We’re not in the business of embarrassing the German government. If we find the papers, we’ll turn them over to you after we’ve examined them, but first we must examine them.” He found himself tapping his fingers on his desk in annoyance. He stopped tapping and continued: “My job is to find and arrest the murderer of Jarvinia Baudler. If my officers locate these papers and if we conclude that they have nothing to do with her murder, we’ll hand them over to the magistrate assigned to the case. I’ll certainly do all I can to keep the contents private, but the German government must apply directly to the judiciary if they want the papers sealed.”
    After fifteen years working in homicide, Cenni was an astute reader of emotions. Reimann exhibited none of the expected signs of anger, not even a prick of irritation, when Cenni refused to go along with the program he had outlined.
    “Of course, of course,” the German responded good-naturedly. “You have your job, dottore , and I have mine. Just keep me informed. I may need help in filling out the correct forms in applying to the judiciary. Italian bureaucracy, you know, has a certain reputation.”
    It