The Whisperer by Donato Carrisi

too, at first. So, instead we start looking and it turns out that a little while ago there was a thief going around the area stealing women’s shoes from the stands outside shoe shops. They only have one shoe per size and model—you know, to stop them being stolen—and usually it’s the right one, to make it easier for the customers to try them on.”
    Mila froze, holding her cup of coffee in midair, and thought for a moment, delightedly, about the originality of that investigative hunch. “So you kept an eye on the shoe shops and caught the thief…”
    “Albert Finley. A thirty-eight-year-old engineer, married, two young sons. A little house in the country and a camper van for holidays.”
    “Normal guy.”
    “In the garage at his home we find a freezer and inside it, carefully wrapped in cellophane, five women’s right feet. He enjoyed making them wear the shoes he stole. It was a kind of fetishist obsession.”
    “Right foot, left arm. Hence Albert!”
    “Exactly!” said Boris, putting a hand on her shoulder in a gesture of approval. Mila abruptly moved aside, jumping off the bed. The young policeman was hurt.
    “Sorry,” she said.
    “No problem.”
    It wasn’t true, and Mila didn’t believe him. But she decided to pretend that it was as he said. She turned her back on him and went back towards the basin. “I’ll just get myself ready, then we can go.”
    Boris got up and went to the door. “That’s fine. I’ll wait for you outside.”
    Mila saw him leaving the room. Then she looked up at the mirror. Oh God, when will it end? she wondered . When am I going to let anyone touch me again?
     
    All the way to Bermann’s house they had hardly exchanged a word. In fact, as she got into the car, Mila had found the radio on and immediately understood that this was a declaration of intent about how the journey was to be. Boris had been hurt, and perhaps now she had another enemy within the unit.
    They got there in just under an hour and a half. Alexander Bermann had lived in a small villa surrounded by trees, in a quiet residential area.
    The street in front had been screened off. Beyond that boundary there was a crowd of onlookers, neighbors and journalists. Mila, looking at them, thought it had begun. As they arrived, they had listened to a radio news item about the discovery of little Debby’s corpse, and Bermann’s name had also come out.
    The reason for so much media euphoria was simple. The graveyard of arms had been a public relations disaster, but now at last they had a name to give the nightmare.
    Mila had seen it happen on other occasions. The press had clung tenaciously to the story and in a very short time they would be trampling indiscriminately over every aspect of Bermann’s life. His suicide amounted to an admission of guilt. For that reason the media would insist on their version. They would put him in the role of monster without allowing any contradiction, trusting solely in the force of their unanimity. They would cruelly tear him to pieces, just as he was supposed to have done to his little victims, but without seeing the irony of the parallel. They would extract liters of blood from the whole business, just to spice up the headlines and make them more enticing. Without respect, without fairness. And even when someone was bold enough to point it out, they would take refuge behind the handy idea of “press freedom” to conceal their unnatural prurience.
    Mila and Boris made their way through the little crowd, entered the exclusion zone set up by the law-enforcement officers and walked quickly along the drive to the front door of the house, unable to avoid being dazzled by a few camera flashes. At that moment Mila caught Goran’s eyes on the other side of the window. She felt absurdly guilty because he had seen her arriving with Boris. And then stupid for having thought such a thing.
    Goran turned his attention back to the inside of the house. Shortly afterwards, Mila stepped through