threshold, he looked inside. He saw a side table, a gleam of light on a mirror, the edge of the bed. A hand, fingertips pointing away from the bed, was the only sign of a human presence that could be glimpsed through the opening.
He took a step forward and crossed the threshold.
As usual, instead of looking, he let his senses become accustomed to the room. He had to establish contact with the atmosphere, with the emotions suspended in the air. He kept his eyelids shut.
The smell, first of all. While in the rest of the bordello the smell of smoke, with an undercurrent of disinfectants, detergents, and dust, dominated, here the scent was of French perfume, elegant and penetrating; flowers, once fresh, fading; a vague aroma of lavender; and the unpleasant tang of stale sweat. No blood.
Then he listened to his skin. The open door had brought the temperature to the same level as the hallway, but he sensed a slight breeze coming from his right, possibly a window cracked open, or else just a draft. The room lay immersed in silence, except for a slow dripping.
The time had come.
He opened his eyes and looked, starting intentionally from the wall farthest from the bed. In the corner he saw the sink with the faucet whose drip he had heard, and a pitcher and washbasin; a vanity and chair, on which a black silk dressing gown with a red pattern had been abandoned; a five-drawer marble-top dresser, upon which he could see a jewel box and a framed photograph of a woman, middle-aged and serious, sitting with a little boy in a sailor suit in her arms; a vase with a spray of fresh flowers; the window, covered by a red curtain imperfectly closed, through which the spring air was entering the room.
His gaze had come around to the bed.
The corpse lay awkwardly sprawled in the middle of the rumpled sheets. One of the legs, as Lily had said, dangled over the side, and the arms were thrown wide, like the wings of a bird that would never again take flight. The light-colored slip was pulled up over the belly, revealing the undergarments that the woman was wearing. The only piece of jewelry on the body was a silver bracelet in the shape of a snake with two green stones in place of eyes, on the left forearm.
The face, uncovered, bore the expression of someone gasping for air, and a section of blackened tongue protruded from the open mouth.
Suffocated. The girl had been suffocated.
Just inches from the head lay a pillow marked with traces of makeup and a patch of damp saliva where it had been violently pressed down onto the mouth and nose, which to judge from the silhouette must have been fractured in the process. Even in the final insult of death, the commissario could tell that Viper must have been very beautiful.
Ricciardi followed the victimâs blank gaze, the direction of her eyes in the moment of extremity. He heaved a long sigh.
Before a mirror that didnât reflect it, the womanâs image: standing, arms at her side, short dark hair framing her face; lips stretched in one last breath, black tongue lolling out.
Looking at its own corpse, the image kept saying:
Little whip, little whip. My little whip
.
Ricciardi ran a hand over his face. Maybe Iâm just imagining it all, he thought for the thousandth time. Maybe itâs just an illusion produced by my sick mind. Maybe itâs some kind of absurd inheritance, a lurking, silent form of madness. Maybe itâs my hundreds of fears, my inability to live life. Maybe itâs just a way to escape reality, maybe thereâs really nothing in front of me.
Outside, in the street two floors below, an accordion struck up a tango. Life in the street was resuming its movement through the first day of spring.
Ricciardi lowered his hand.
Along with the pain and grief of departure, the now familiar sense of melancholy and regret, and the surprise at being dead that Ricciardi knew all too well, he could just make out the echo of Viperâs last thought:
Little whip, little