Tony Carcano is a recognized writer, but his everyday life is rather colorless. He lives in Bolzano in the same neighborhood where he was born, and his best friend is a hundred-kilo Saint Bernard. The unexpected intrusion into his life, Sibylle, a dangerously fascinating twenty-year-old who rides a cross motorbike and carries a spring-loaded knife, changes everything dramatically. The girl hands Tony a photo from years ago, in which he, young and smiling, stands over the body of a woman. Though the man tried to forget about the past, he and Sibylle are now beginning a new investigation. The trail leads them to a meeting with a small, closed community in the mountain town of Kreuzwirt. Behind Erica’s murder is an unimaginable mystery interwoven with lies, violence, greed and madness. And the key to solving it, it seems, is a certain symbol – the smile of a hummingbird.
Thriller translated by Tomasz Kwiecień will be released by Wydawnictwo WAB on January 26.
Luca D’Andrea “Wędrowiec” – fragment:
Erika is back. Almost as if she changed her mind.
On the evening of Maturaball, Erika said goodbye to her, kissed the baby’s forehead, left, and then returned. She came back and knocked on the door, even though she had a bunch of keys in a shiny clutch bag.
This detail will make Aunt Helga feel guilty. If only she understood. If she could sense. But did she have a chance?
The clutch bag was a gift from Oskar. Inside, Erikan found two bills of fifty thousand lire and a note. “We’re proud of you!” She wiped a few tears with excitement and hugged Oscar so hard she almost crushed him. But she didn’t try to return the money. Erika knew she needed it. Sibylle was a treasure, but the children, capricious or not, cost money. a fortune.
Like the dress on Maturaball that Aunt Helga insisted on buying with her money.
Until the last moment, Erika couldn’t decide whether to go for black or red. In the end, she decided on the red one, and Aunt Helga approved the choice. The dress was provocative, cheeky, sexy. In other words, it was a great fit. And even though on the twenty-first evening, when Helga was helping her brush her hair, Erika continued to complain that she looked like a surfboard in this dress (and Aunt Helga pointed out that her mother Helena did not have a dairy in front, too, which did not stop her chasing half of the boys from Kreuzwirt after her), Helga knew that Erika was delighted with the dress. High school prom. Life. It was slowly starting to fall into place. Or so she believed.
Because Erika is back. She waited for her to get up from the sofa, put the baby in the cradle, and open the door. Then, and that too will haunt Aunt Helga for years (in the waking hours and dreams in which she relived this terrible moment), Erika smiled at her and stroked her cheek.
– I forgot to tell you how much I love you.
– I love you too. Are you sure you won’t catch a cold?
– No, it’s okay.
Aunt Helga closed the door.
***
Erika, instead of taking right off the lane near the house and reaching Black Hat, where she made an appointment with Karin, Elisa and Gabriel, turned left. Towards the forest. In ballerinas, which immediately turned muddy after descending from the asphalt to the path.
One of them, specifically the left one, will be found the next day by a volunteer, in a puddle some kilometer from the lake, more or less at the point where the forest ends and the bog begins. Erika lost her slipper and didn’t stop to find it. What for?
It was of no use to her where she was going.
Maybe the lake has a name on the maps. For the inhabitants of Kreuzwirt, it was just a lake. At the end of March, its waters were usually covered with a patina of ice. But the spring of 1999 was strange and hot. Halny did not give up throughout January and February, not allowing the snow to fall. The temperature at that hour hovered around fifteen degrees. Well above average. That’s why Erika left the house in a light jacket draped over her shoulders and did not wear anything warmer. Therefore, the ice did not prevent her from doing what she did.
Erika dipped her feet up to the ankles. Then the water reached her calves. Then to my knees.
Few of the inhabitants of Kreuzwirt went to the lake to swim. Not only because of the foxes in the area, the insects and the uninviting smell of the bog, but because the lake was deep and dangerous; everyone knew about it. Those who immersed themselves in it, usually to cool off in the summer heat, said that there was a degree one or a half meters from the shore. A step further and it fell into a well. Erika has overcome that line.
The icy water did the rest.
When Dr. Horst saw her floating face down during one of the numerous walks that his insomnia made him make on March 22, at four in the morning, he immediately understood that he was dealing with a corpse. Nevertheless, he threw off his jacket and jumped into the water. A heroic deed, as everyone said.
Not without effort, since Dr. Horst was a fifty-two-year-old in poor physical condition in 1999, he pulled Erika ashore, checked her pulse just in case, and only then called the carabinieri on his cell phone.
The nearest station was at Campo Tures, about thirty kilometers from Kreuzwirt. It took forever for the carabinieri to get there, but Horst hadn’t even thought of leaving Erika alone in the bog. The thought that soaked clothes might kill him from hypothermia didn’t even cross his mind. He stayed where he was, embracing himself, rattling his teeth and pacing back and forth, staring at the girl’s face, her hair spilled over the mud and asking why, why, why the hell, why such a girl, why …
The carabinieri arrived half an hour later. They had flashlights and lots of questions.
Though Maturaball officially ended around one in the morning with Nazareth’s Love Hurts (which allowed the couples to migrate without embarrassment in the light drizzle that had just started raining on Kreuzwirt just as the roosters of the carabinieri vans illuminated the village’s main street), there were still quite a few young people in the streets.
The news spread instantly. The crazy Erika is dead.
***
Then journalists appeared.
Sib looked at him intently with her big blue eyes, tapped the photo in which he was smiling beside Erika’s corpse, and folded her arms over her chest.
Now it’s his turn. Tony sighed. That’s why he pulled a Mustang out of the garage. Why delay?
Source: Gazeta
Tristin is an accomplished author and journalist, known for his in-depth and engaging writing on sports. He currently works as a writer at 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the sports industry.
