The Whisperer by Donato Carrisi Page A

the door.
    Stern and Sarah Rosa, with the help of other detectives, had already been there for a while, and were bustling around like worker ants. Everything had been turned upside down. The officers were painstakingly examining furniture, walls and anything else that might be able to reveal a clue to the mystery.
    Once again, Mila had been unable to join in the search. Besides, Sarah Rosa had immediately barked in her face that she had only observation rights. So she started looking around, keeping her hands in her pockets so that she didn’t have to justify the bandages wrapped around them.
    What attracted her attention were the photographs.
    There were dozens of them arranged around the place on tables and chests of drawers, in elegant walnut or silver frames. They showed Bermann and his wife in happy times. A life that now seemed far away and impossible. They had done a lot of traveling, Mila noticed. There were pictures from all over the world. But as the pictures became more recent and their faces older, their expressions seemed veiled. There was something in those photographs, Mila was sure of it. But she couldn’t say what it was. She had had a strange feeling as she walked into that house. Now she thought she had a clearer sense of what it might be.
    A presence.
    Amidst all the comings and goings of the police officers, there was another spectator. Mila recognized the woman in the photographs: Veronica Bermann, the wife of the alleged murderer. She could tell immediately that the woman was proud by nature. She maintained an attitude of decorous detachment as those strangers touched her things without asking her permission, violating the intimacy of those objects, those memories, with their invasive presence. She seemed not so much resigned as consenting. She had offered to cooperate with Chief Inspector Roche, confidently asserting that her husband had nothing to do with those terrible accusations.
    Mila was still watching her when, turning round, she found herself confronted with an unexpected spectacle.
    There was an entire wall covered with preserved butterflies .
    They were in glass frames. There were strange ones and beautiful ones. Some of them had exotic names, which were quoted along with the place of origin on a bronze plate. The most fascinating ones came from Africa and Japan.
    “They’re beautiful because they’re dead.”
    It was Goran who said it. The criminologist was wearing a black jumper and wool trousers. Part of his shirt collar stuck out of the neck of his pullover. He came and stood next to her to get a better look at the butterfly wall.
    “When we see something like this we forget the most important and most obvious thing…those butterflies will never fly again.”
    “It’s unnatural,” Mila agreed. “And yet it’s so seductive…”
    “That’s exactly the effect that death has on some individuals. That’s why serial killers exist.”
    Goran made a small gesture. That was all it took for all the members of the team to gather around him immediately. A sign that even if they seemed entirely absorbed in their own tasks, they were really still looking at him, waiting for him to say or do something.
    Mila had confirmation of the great trust that they placed in his hunches. Goran guided them. It was very strange, because he wasn’t a police officer, and cops—at least the ones she knew—had always resisted putting their trust in civilians. It would have been more accurate for the group to call themselves “the Gavila team” than “the Roche team,” particularly since Roche, as usual, wasn’t there. He would only appear if incontestable evidence appeared that would nail Bermann once and for all.
    Stern, Boris and Rosa took up their positions around the criminologist, according to their usual pattern. Mila remained a step behind: afraid of feeling excluded, she excluded herself.
    Goran spoke in a low voice, immediately catching the tone with which he wanted the conversation to