Doctored Evidence Read Free

pair of black tennis shoes stood side by side on the floor. On the windowsill beside the bed were a photograph in a cheap cardboard frame of three small children, and a book he didn’t bother to examine. Inside a cardboard folder he found photocopies of official documents: the first two pages of Florinda Ghiorghiu’s Romanian passport and copies of her Italian residence and work permits. Born in 1953, her occupation was given as ‘domestic helper’. There was a second-class return train ticket between Bucharest and Venice, the second half still unused. Because there was no table and no chair in the room, there was no other surface to inspect.
    Lieutenant Scarpa pulled out his
telefonino
and called the Questura to get the number for the Frontier Police at Villa Opicina. Calling the number, he gave his name and rank and a brief account of the murder. He asked when the next train from Venice was expected to cross the border. Saying that their suspect might be on that train and firmly emphasizing that the killer was Romanian, he added that, should she manage to reach Romania, there was little chance of extraditing her, so it was of the utmost importance that she be removed from the train.
    He said he’d fax her photo as soon as he got to the Questura, re-emphasized the viciousness of the crime, and hung up.
    Leaving the scene of crime team to continueits examination of the apartment, Scarpa ordered the pilot to take him back to the Questura, where he faxed Ghiorghiu’s form to the Frontier Police, hoping that the photo would come through clearly. That done, Lieutenant Scarpa went to speak to his superior, Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta, to inform him of the speed with which violent crime was being pursued.
    In Villa Opicina, the fax came through as the officer in charge of the Frontier Police, Captain Luca Peppito, was phoning the
capostazione
at the railway station, telling him that the Zagreb express would have to be halted long enough to allow him and his men to search for a violent killer who was attempting to flee the country. Peppito replaced the phone, checked that his pistol was loaded, and went downstairs to collect his men.
    Twenty minutes later, the Intercity to Zagreb pulled into the station and slowed to a halt that normally lasted only long enough for the engines to be changed and the passengers’ passports to be checked. In recent years, customs inspection between these two minor players in the game of a united Europe had become perfunctory and generally led to nothing more than the payment of duty on the odd carton of cigarettes or bottle of grappa which were no longer viewed as a threat to the economic survival of either nation.
    Peppito had sent men to both ends of the train and placed two more at the entrance to thestation; all were under orders to examine the passports of any female passengers alighting from the train.
    Three men climbed on at the back of the train and started to work their way forward, examining the passengers in every compartment and checking that no one was in the toilets, while Peppito and a pair of officers began the same process, working backwards from the first carriage.
    It was Peppito’s sergeant who spotted her, sitting in a window seat in a second-class compartment, in the first carriage behind the engine. He almost overlooked her because she was asleep or pretending to be, her head turned towards the window and resting against it. He saw the broad Slavic planes of her face, her hair grown out white at the roots for lack of care, and the squat, muscular frame so common among women from the East. Two other people sat in the compartment, a large red-faced man reading a German-language newspaper, and an older man working on one of the word puzzles in
Settimana Enigmistica
. Peppito slid the door back, banging it against the frame. That shook the woman awake; she looked about her with startled eyes. The two men looked up at the uniformed officers, and the