What the Nanny Saw Ch. 05

Chapter 5: A missed opportunity

Romano must have eventually fallen asleep, following his telephonic fight with Lydia, because the ring of the phone jerked him awake as the very first rays of the sun filtered through his window.

"Whaddayawant?" he mumbled into the receiver. Then, realizing he held it the wrong way round, tried again. "Romano. Who's this?"

"Boss," came Sergeant Carlo's voice, "there's been a break-in, at the Bonsignore house."

Romano was truly awake now. "What do you mean, a break-in? Don't we have a guard posted? Where the fuck was he?"

"There was a call about a gun shot down the road, so he left to investigate. He swears up and down it was 15 minutes tops."

"Was there a shooting?" Romano wanted to know.

"He didn't find anything. Boss, I'm thinking it was a distraction, to get him out of the way?"

Romano sighed. "Meet me there in an hour, let's go see what the damage is."

A restless night called for a double-ristretto which he paired with the last, stale cantuccini. As he showered and dressed, his thoughts ping-ponged between Lydia and the nanny. Fights with Lydia were common enough, but were usually resolved with make-up sex. With her in Liguria and his next trip put off till this case was resolved, if ever, how would they fix things?

The nanny was a more immediate problem. If there was a break-in, where was she? Wasn't she still staying at the big house?

Without Di Stefano to drive him, it took Romano double the time to get to the house on Strada Lucciole. But that was less of a concern than the parade of angry motorists that were stuck behind him, shouting and gesturing into his rear-view mirror.

Carlo was already there, examining a side window that had been forced open. It was in a location sheltered from the guard's immediate view.

"Someone picked this spot with care, Boss," said Carlo as Romano walked up. "They just needed a distraction to get here and they could probably work undisturbed for a while."

"Where was the girl, the nanny?" asked Romano. "Didn't she hear anything?"

"Oh no, the Palermo relations kicked her out, but she left her new address with Catterina at the station."

"I'm tempted to give the guard a serious talking to, but it won't do us any good now," said Romano with a sigh. "Let's go see the damage."

As they walked through the house, Carlo let Romano know about some key developments: the pathologist had indeed found ceramic dust in the wound.

"Not that it will do us any good, Boss," said Carlo. "'Cause forensics found the pieces and they won't tell us anything."

"Why not?" asked Romano.

"They found them in the incinerator. They were smashed to bits. Too small for fingerprints. And they've been baked. Any blood's been denatured and there'll be no usable DNA."

"Hmm," answered Romano. "So as evidence goes, that's going nowhere, but as information, it's not bad."

"How do you figure?" asked Carlo

"Well it tells us a few things: the killer either snuck up, or was known to the victim. You aren't gonna turn your back to someone you don't trust, right?" Carlo nodded in answer. "And the killer is thoughtful. If they killed in a panic, the pieces would have been left. But no, they collect everything and bake it. They thought about the evidence."

"I guess. Yes, that makes sense," allowed Carlo.

"But most important, 99% not the mafia. A hit is gonna be two in the back of the head from above."

"And thank the Madonna for that..." answered Carlo.

It was quickly clear that the intruder had found what they wanted. Half the drawers in the study next to where they had found Bonsingore's body were turned out, but half were undisturbed.

"You aren't gonna keep looking if you find what you wanted," said Romano. Carlo already knew it, of course, but also knew the Inspector well enough to let him have his little moments of glory.

But the evidence that someone had wanted, and found, something wasn't the big revelation of the day. No, that would have to be the door behind the bookcase, now wedged open.

"How the fuck did forensics miss this? Fucking Vitale too busy breaking my balls to do his actual job?" demanded Romano.

"Look at the joinery here, Boss," answered Carlo. "If the intruder hadn't jimmied it, we'd never have known it was here. A better question is how the intruder knew to look for it."

Carlo was right of course, but Romano preferred to focus his rage on Vitale.

"After you," said Romano, getting out a small flashlight.

Whatever the two policemen had expected to find at the bottom of the hidden staircase, it certainly wasn't this. A large and excessively furnished... well... sex dungeon was the only way to put it. Romano was a man of the world, but there were a number of things he didn't know the names for. Carlo was bright red in the face.

There were your standards - a wall of whips, chains from the ceiling, some kind of standing wooden cross, a stockade. But there were electrical implements too. Some kind of machine mounted dildo and a chair made of thick metal piping that looked like it rotated forward and back. There were cages of various sizes and a box that looked like a person's head and hands would go inside, leaving the rest of them exposed.

Carlo sputtered, "What the fuck....?"

There was also a cabinet on the wall over some kind of audio-visual control station. The cabinet was forced open and a quick look suggested that two DVD cases were missing from the upper middle. Romano pulled on a pair of latex gloves and took the first DVD from the second row and placed it in the player next to the tv.

The scene that sputtered to life had clearly been filmed in this space. A girl, with what looked like dusky skin, though the lighting made it hard to tell, was hanging by her wrists. "She's not more than 20," thought Romano. "Maybe Tunesian?" he said out loud.

Her legs kicked as she was cranked up toward the ceiling. A woman stepped into view. She was dressed in black leather or latex and held an unfriendly whip with three balls attached to strands at the end. Romano had a sense where this was leading and skipped forward.

In the next part, the screams of, presumably, the hanging woman could be heard. But she wasn't on camera. Rather, the camera was pointed at the back of a girl, sat on the weird rotating chair. The camera was zoomed in, but they could see the side of a breast, squished against her thigh. The chair was rotated forward. The camera moved around her back and the design of the chair became clearer. She was sitting on the metal pipes, which rested under her mid-thighs. But rotated forward like that, her ass and her vagina were completely exposed. Open to the camera's, and anyone else's', view.

A figure stepped past the camera, settling into place behind the chair. An open hand showed the viewers some kind of goo or gel. The hand then rubbed the goo into the girl's genitals and her asshole. Pushing fingers into both. The camera caught the sound of moan, even with the fading screams of the hanging girl. The hand fucked into the girl in the chair, fast and hard, and her panting and moaning escalated.

When she sounded like she might be approaching orgasm, the hand suddenly withdrew. The camera pulled back and two things became clear. First, the man was almost certainly Bonsignore. He was the right size, shape and color, and as he lined up his penis with her ass, the camera caught his ornate signet ring.

But second thing, and much more surprising to both men, the girl in the chair was known to them.

"Is that... is that the nanny?" asked Carlo over the grunts of the girl, getting fucked in the ass. "I only saw her from a distance, but I'd swear that's the nanny."

Romano wore a deep frown. "She looks exactly like the nanny," said Romano, his eyes locked on the girl's ass as the cock pounded in and out. "But I know something you don't know. Our Giulia most definitely doesn't have that mole on her ass, I'll swear to that right now."

The Sergeant had no answer to that.