Accused: A gripping thriller

By Mark Toscano

A crime reporter. A strange murder. An ex-convict with a dark secret...

Onofrio Palillo receives compensation many years after wrongful imprisonment for murder. Whilst trying to arrange an interview, Fabrizio Corsaro, a crime reporter, finds Palillo dead at his home.

Investigations reveal incriminating evidence, which lead detectives to arrest Fabrizio himself for the murder. It's left to his brother Roberto, a criminal lawyer, to save Fabrizo from the nightmare into which his life has suddenly been plunged.

With the help of deputy police prefect Domenico Fisichella, Roberto delves into Palillo's mysterious past. They discover an old secret that puts them on the trail of the most powerful man in Sicily, Giorgio Moncada.

A complex story, full of mystery and memorable characters.

What people are saying about ACCUSED:

'Complex, accessible and feels like a real work portrayal of crime and its effects'

'What a great read, I really could not put this one down!'

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Dec 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781784978907

Mark Toscano

Mark Toscano is a journalist and author. He has worked for the radio, television and agencies, and writes on politics for national newspapers in Italy.

Book preview

Part One

CRIME

Such a mean old man

Mean Mr Mustard, The Beatles

(Lennon & McCartney), 1969

1

Fabrizio Corsaro

I could see myself in their eyes. They all had the same emotionless expression, their heads rested heavily on their shoulders. They roamed around like lazy animals that had been kept captive for so long that they had lost their predatory instincts. If purgatory really existed, it would have been full of people like this. Every now and then we glanced into each others eyes, and I could read in them a reflection of my own sense of defeat. One of them lit up a cigarette, another one fiddled with his mobile phone, the most nervous ones walked round and round like mental patients. All eight of us – that’s right, I counted – stood there, frozen in space and time, we glanced at our watches obsessively, wondering how long we would spend on this pavement on via Ruggero Settimo, outside Zara’s.

It was a Saturday afternoon. The eight of us – all male, of course – were waiting for our wives, partners or girlfriends, who had ventured inside the shop where almost paranormal events occurred, here women disappeared for large amounts of time.

I observed with sadness the other men, while several girls wearing extremely short skirts and dizzyingly high heels walked the pavement – I wondered how on earth I had become a victim of this. I recollected the phantom of the man that I had been a couple of years ago and I felt emptiness pervade my stomach. After the longest thirty minutes of my life Maria exited the shop. She was holding a tiny bag containing something that I’m sure I would have taken less than one hundred and seventy seconds to buy. She was afflicted and she confessed to me that, as always, there wasn’t much of interest in there. I smiled a fake smile in reply to hers and I offered her my arm like an old man asking his lady for a romantic dance. Without saying a word, we headed towards Politeama. I felt like an inmate walking the Green Mile.

Yeah, those were hard times, I must admit. The first year with Maria had been almost perfect. When you have lived for seven years like an eternal Peter Pan, changing underwear and women with almost the same regularity, falling in love for real was a huge deal. Or at least, I saw it as a huge deal. Maria Librizzi was a very different kind of woman to those that I had met during the previous thirty-five years of my life. She had character, she was a good listener, and she was also good at saying whatever had to be said with extreme clarity and bluntness – I had learned to love those qualities. None of the small sacrifices had been a burden whatsoever for at least a year.

I really felt like a different person next to Maria. The questionable excesses of my previous life were a long forgotten memory and I didn’t miss them. One morning – I remember it well – I woke up with her lying on me. She was sleeping like a child, snoring very lightly. On a similar occasion, the old Fabrizio Corsaro would have woken up his occasional sleeping buddy to satisfy his punctual, glorious morning erection. Sometimes he would have even encouraged this occasional partner to get out of the house within a reasonable time.

That morning though, I had stared at her for almost an hour, as if I was trying to memorise every inch of her face. I had turned to look out of the window, the sky was clear and beautiful dominating the dome of the Cathedral in Palermo. I realised that only sixteen year olds could live like assholes without actually feeling like an asshole. If you’re twenty years older than sixteen, maybe it’s time to really live like a man. It may not even be such a bad thing.

*

The first year had been really exciting. I loved spending my life with her. I mean, I didn’t like all of her qualities – especially her passion for politics that had turned her into a revolutionary activist, but love had slowly worn down my cynicism and helped me tolerate this aspect of her. My job – I worked as a reporter – had begun to feel increasingly less like a burden. When I got out of the editorial office, the thought of going home and finding someone waiting for me would make up for the shittiest of days. Maria loved me – she didn’t lean on me to make up for an empty existence; she wasn’t trying to redeem past errors through our love affair; she didn’t annihilate herself upon the altar of love; she loved giving more than receiving. She was a perfect lover, that’s how I saw her.

I loved our walks in the countryside, the times we walked all the way up to the little town where I’d met her, when we’d visit her crazy uncle, Valentino Ambrosetti, who had remained alone after Maria had left the house. He was a northern giant and would spend most of his days talking about conspiracy theories, preparing and drinking strong liquors and making insanely large amounts of soup. He also owned eleven pedigree dogs that he had named after the Turin football team.

Everything was going well. That is, until something began to give. The first time I’d had an uneasy feeling was during an October night. Maria and I never really argued. It was a real miracle, considering that both of us were really strong characters. And yet, apart from some occasional sarcasm, our house had never seen a single plate fly. It was a few of my friends who lit the fuse.

Pippo Nocera, one of my co-workers at the editorial office, Marcello Mancuso, one of my high school mates – who had always wanted to become a well established solicitor to continue his family tradition but never really made it – and Salvo Morgano, an evergreen skilled striker in our own football team, still a slender man despite his beer belly.

They had insisted on playing poker that night. I had always found gambling to be as boring as bad sex. That night, however, for the first time in more than a year, I accepted their invitation to play. That was my first mistake. The second mistake was the one that I made when Maria told me that she didn’t feel well.

Alright – I won’t leave you alone, I’ll tell the guys to meet here.

She didn’t utter a word. That silence should have been a clear warning that the shit was about to hit the fan. My brother’s experience would have helped me to understand the terrible mistake that I was about to make – my brother had been married ever since I was a little child.

My friends came to my place armed with the worst intentions. The lounge quickly turned into a filthy place that stank like a fishing bay. They chugged whiskey like water, the ash tray was overflowing with cigarette butts, the air was so full of toxins from all the smoke that even the Marlboro Man would have struggled to breathe in there. It was a terrible night. Everything came to an end at two thirty in the morning, when Salvo, the only one who hadn’t drank any alcohol, offered to give the other two a lift. The other guys were talking loudly by the door, they were arguing about which team was the strongest between Trapattoni’s Juventus or Sacchi’s Milan.

When they had gone, I crept into the master bedroom, I noticed that Maria wasn’t asleep.

Are you alright?

Did you open the windows? It stinks, she answered, without looking at me.

I know, I’m sorry—

Did you open them or not?

Of course I did, I lied. I wanted it to end there. I didn’t like her tone. The Laphroaig and the smoke had triggered a devastating headache.

I slid under the blankets in my underwear.

What are you doing? She asked angrily.

What do you think I’m doing? I dared.

You stink – go and wash yourself first.

It was then that the thought began to take shape.

I got up and without uttering a word headed to the bathroom. From there, I heard her voice once again.

I hope you tidied up the lounge, I’m not going to clean up after anyone.

I looked at my reflection in the mirror incredulously. Was the guy with grey sideburns and white hairs on his chest really me? Yeah, it seemed it was. Fabrizio Corsaro. I rinsed my face and forced myself to remain silent. The thought was becoming clearer and clearer in my mind.

I went back to the bedroom. She was waiting for an answer, she didn’t get it.

I silently slid under the blanket once again; the alcohol was torturing my temples with painful beats.

Enough is enough, she hissed and rolled over.

Yes, I know. It was the most trivial of arguments between a couple. Something most people would forget about. After her comment though, I looked at her, and the thought became crystal clear.

That side of the bed had once belonged to me. That night I remembered for the first time how comfortable that side was.

2

Roberto Corsaro

The day when you realise that you’ve reached your forties comes in an underhand manner. In my case, it was my daughter Rebecca who made me realise the atrocity of getting older. I had bathed her and helped her dry her long, black hair. It was one of my fatherly commitments that I really enjoyed, because it needed care and affection – I paid attention not to over heat her scalp with the hairdryer. I couldn’t lose myself in my own thoughts.

I was stroking my little child’s head while Monica was preparing some food for Giacomo in the other room. She was shouting at him to stop running around the house. I was immersed in that soothing moment, and my chronic sciatica had finally given me a break for the first time after a long week of torture. The hairdryer muffled Rebecca’s words but I heard her repeat them multiple times to our little son. I turned the hairdryer off when I realised that my little daughter was trying to tell me something.

Yes, my love?

Look at your hairs, Daddy, she shouted, pointing at my face.

What hairs, darling?

These.

She pressed her finger into my left ear. I was confused, and drew closer to the mirror to understand what she was referring to.

I noticed for the first time the horrible bush that grew from inside my ear, it made me look like a hobbit. When had this horrible creature first made its appearance? And what other genetic mutations would I have to endure as I grew older?

Rebecca giggled, she was amused.

It makes you look like a gorilla, Daddy.

I froze in front of the mirror in dismay until my wife walked into the bathroom – she burst into the room ominously, like Jack Nicholson holding his axe. She brought me back to reality as she scolded me for leaving Rebecca’s hair wet.

*

During the first forty years of my life, I’d never paid much attention to my physical form. In fact, you could say that I’d always been uninterested in it. I remember going to court with unmatched shoes once – that pretty much shows how little I ever stood in front of a mirror. After that shock in the bathroom, though, something changed in me – I began to lose interest in things like cinema, theatre and classical music. For the first time since I could remember, I began to stare at my reflection in the mirror in an attempt to identify all the horrible mutations that my body had undergone with age while I wasn’t looking. I found dozens of them.

Monica caught me staring into the mirror once – she had walked softly into the bathroom like a rabbit through a snow field. She had found me trying to trim the stubborn hairs that grew out of my nostrils.

Are you okay? She asked, staring at me – she looked perplexed and amused at the same time, as if she had just seen a brontosaurus.

I didn’t utter a word, I didn’t want to cut my upper lip. My wife shook her head with an air of commiseration and walked away without commenting any further.

The war against aging had just begun. The battle against the unwanted hairs that grew like nasty wild grass were just the beginning. My brand new obsession helped me to spot a bigger, tougher enemy. My belly was one of those opponents that looked almost invincible and it was clearly my fault – years of slothfulness had given it a head start and it seemed impossible to catch it up now.

I started dieting and I began to work out like never before. Initially, Monica would nag me about my new obsession, but when she realised that exercise was easing the pain of my sciatica, she accepted it without much protest. Another woman might have suspected me of having a secret lover or of wanting to attract the attention of the opposite gender. However, Monica knew me inside out and she never appeared to have that suspicion. One of the reasons why she didn’t worry was that most of her time was taken up with reprimanding our son, Giacomo; that little boy seemed to have set driving her crazy as his daily mission. And I must say, my wife wasn’t very far from being crazy already.

I spent the entire spring focussed on my battle against belly fat. My days swung between ups and downs. An up was when Valeria, one of my co-workers, complimented me on my weight loss after staring at me for a few seconds. The day that I got caught up in a conversation with an overweight woman who wouldn’t stop talking about her entire life, including details about her husband’s urine test, as I was waiting for my daughter outside the school was a down. To avoid being rude, I’d faked interest in the conversation, but unfortunately this encouraged the large lady to continue her ridiculous monologue: That’s the life, unfortunately. Everyone from about forty-five, regardless of their lifestyle and profession, are more or less subjected to aging. Including well off lawyers like you! I had struggled to keep a calm, composed demeanour.

Thinking about my physical aspect wasn’t the only thing that I did during the day. When the kids were fast asleep, and Monica couldn’t keep her eyes open, I enjoyed watching films – Hitchcock, Kubrick and others. That night in April, I was enjoying a bunch of films starring Dustin Hoffman. I had bought them with my favourite magazine. Marathon Man was the film that I enjoyed the most, as the main character, Thomas ‘Babe’ Levy, reminded me of my brother Fabrizio – his hairstyle, his sarcastic voice that sounded so different to usual (the dubbing actor in this film was Giannini instead of Amendola, who dubbed all the other films), and the way he looked confused all the time. The film made me think about Fabrizio – I hadn’t called him for weeks and I knew I wanted to speak to him soon. Just like Babe, however, I could never have imagined the misfortune that was about to befall us all during the following twenty-four hours.

3

Fabrizio Corsaro

The little ball was beginning to roll down the slope. My relationship with Maria was becoming more and more claustrophobic, like the sixteen year old mother’s dress that gets shorter and shorter in 4th March 1943 by Lucio Dalla, God have mercy on his soul. We had been together for two years now and most of my friends would have wagered that it wouldn’t last longer than two months – they believed that I was unable to settle down with a woman.

Sometimes I paused, during the few solitary moments that I had left, to try to understand what had changed recently. It was a useless exercise – I never found an answer. Then, I came up with the only possible reason – I was the one who’d changed. A book by Stephen King that I had been reading for a few weeks during that spring inspired me to see things more clearly. The book was about a man who travelled back in time to save Kennedy from being assassinated. Each time that the character changed the past, something would oppose him, as if the future didn’t want to be altered. During those days, I felt like something within me had started rebelling, I was trying to avoid becoming somebody that I didn’t want to be.

To make things even more complicated, Valentino, Maria’s uncle, began to behave like a hormone driven teenager. He had fallen, head over heels, for a man a lot younger than him. The guy was a forty five year old from Palermo and there was something about him that didn’t seem quite right. His first name wasn’t convincing. Everybody called him Pierre but I was pretty sure that his real name was Pietro, if not something completely different. I wasn’t bothered by his excessive femininity and his brightly dyed hair; by his tendency to talk too much about trivia or his rough ignorance – which was sometimes enjoyable, as it made him say funny phrases like ‘I have a diagonal ulcer’ – or the constant and persistent onion smell that lingered on him. There was something else that bothered me about the man I happened to share some weekends with in Castelferro and who occasionally accompanied Maria’s uncle when he visited us at my house. First of all, Pierre had never made it clear what it was he did for a living. My mother had always taught me to be wary of men who hide what they do for a living, it didn’t matter if they had an empty wallet or if they lit their cigars with fifty pound notes. As a second point, I believed that Pierre had a somewhat negative influence on Maria’s uncle. It was like Pierre held him under his thumb, like a femme fatale who slow-cooked rich old men only to leave after they’ve sucked them dry, and not in a sexual way either. I just didn’t like him. I’m not saying it now that I know what happened – that would be ‘too easy, too simple, too comfortable’, as my brother Roberto likes to say, quoting Saro Urzì’s theatre show Sedotta e Abbandonata. I mentioned to Maria that I had a problem with him, but she disagreed and was clearly annoyed by my antipathy. She accused me of being homophobic.

Uncle Valentino looks very happy with him. They’re a gorgeous couple – try to overcome your prejudice.

Prejudice? I don’t like him, I don’t have prejudice.

You just can’t accept that his sexuality is different to yours.

Bullshit, Maria. Don’t be a blue dick.

What the fuck are you on about?

I meant that Maria was behaving like one of those feminist writers who spout bullshit all day and, when somebody points it out, they cry misogyny and sexual discrimination. Just like the Spaghetti House kidnappers, who kidnapped some Italian waiters in London. One of the waiters called the kidnapper a dick and the kidnappers then called the waiter racist. The waiter then replied with one

Reviews for Accused

[melisende-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The 4-star rating is a clue that I loved this book. I have been getting into crime noir (with a touch of humour) with the likes of Maria Angelica Bosco, Frederic Dard, Augustus de Angelus and even Caimh McDonnell - and to this group I would add Mark Toscano."Accused" is flavoured with local references and language, is both hard-hitting and at times, slightly humourous; is addictive and highly readable. Told in the first person (alternating) narrative by two brothers, we are taken on a roller-coaster ride where a seemingly innocuous act sends one of the brothers headlong down the path of no return, leaving the other to solve the puzzle before them."Accused" is a tome I would gladly welcome to my crime shelf in my own personal library.In summing up, author Mark Toscano lets slip that this may not be the first outing of the Corsaro brothers ....... I look forward to tracking down their earlier exploits.