“When?”
“This morning, before daybreak. A van came and they loaded up everything in less than an hour. They didn’t even say goodbye to us, although we knew them. The wife must have left earlier, because I only saw the husband.”
“You’ve no idea where they went?”
“No. It was a very sudden move. My wife was upset because she was fond of that woman. You know how it is with people in a foreign country.”
“They must have found a better house.”
The man shook his head. “Perhaps. Anyway, it’s better this way. Ghitta was murdered in that house. They must have decided it wasn’t a good idea to stay any longer.”
“You think they were afraid?”
Mohammed’s eyes lit up. “I have my own opinion, but I don’t know what you’d make of it.”
“Opinions can be valuable,” the commissario encouraged him. “The thing is to take them for what they are.”
“There was something not clear, or maybe not clean, in that house. The woman next door once told my wife that she often heard yelling coming from it. She couldn’t make out what it was all about, but they weren’t calm people, and I’m not talking about the couples who met there. From what she understood, they were arguing about money and payments. And when there’s money involved . . .”
“Did she hear Ghitta shouting as well?”
“No. It was men’s voices, angry men.”
“Quite often?”
“Five or six times, I think, but the lady wasn’t always there because she was out doing things in rich people’s houses. It was Ghitta who got her these jobs.”
“You don’t know anything else?”
“No. These are things this lady told my wife in confidence, and I wouldn’t like to think that their departure . . .”
“Who is the owner of the apartment?”
“A man who builds lots of houses, that’s all I know. This is a dead area where no-one goes out at night and people keep their doors locked. It’s only foreigners like us who keep our shops open, and we have to be on the lookout. That’s another reason why we upset them.”
“Have you received threats?”
“No, or at least not so far, but that man in the strange clothes came back once to ask if we’d changed our mind. You get the impression that he’s very interested. He raised the first offer, and for me they were crazy figures. You policemen have got it in for us as well. As soon as it’s closing time, you arrive to threaten fines and closures if anyone makes a sound, although you people are not as bad as in other cities.”
Mohammed went back to his work, leaving Soneri assailed by doubts. The customers at the tables were calling out impatiently for Mohammed, the children were chanting verses and voices were being raised at the trading stall. The commissario walked out into the mist, away from that world bubbling with vitality. His route took him up Via Saffi towards Piazzale dei Servi, in the direction of Fadiga’s refuge. He now knew where to put his hands, and once again he felt a page from a newspaper wrapped in cellophane. He picked it up, stuck it in his pocket and headed for Via Repubblica and the last-minute shoppers. In front of the window of a perfumery, he took out the cutting and saw the photograph of the deputy mayor Roberto Lusetti, someone else he remembered from the “hot years” of the protest movement, another one who had marched in demonstrations and then, as the years slipped past, had been attracted to political life and had gone over, somersault by somersault, to the side of his erstwhile enemies.
The clatter of shutters rang out amid the roar of the late buses, and a light breeze caused the mist in Piazza Garibaldi, now empty of people, to billow about. He took out his mobile and called Juvara. “Could you check up on something for me?
The hesitation at the other end told him that the inspector was on the point of going home, but before he could raise an objection, Soneri said: “I’d like to know who owns the flat at number thirty-five Via Saffi, the one between where Ghitta and Fernanda lived.”
He was aware of Juvara’s lack of enthusiasm for the task, but judging by the sound of air expelled from the padded seats which were standard issue in the questura, he had sat down again. “I hope it’s been registered and that all I have to do is check with the data bank at the housing office. Stay on the line,” he said, as though he were a telephone operator.
The commissario heard him typing rapidly. “We’re in luck,” the inspector said after a brief interval. “The flat is owned by a company, La Maison s.r.l.”
“Can you go back onto the data bank and tell me what’s behind that company name?”
Juvara said nothing, perhaps regretting his gift of the lamp, but went to work dutifully on the keyboard. “There’s one director called Renato Avanzini, and his partner is called Amintore Cornetti.”
“Where’s their office?”
“Fourteen Borgo Fellini.”
The commissario gave a mumbled grazie, but he had already switched off. He was deep in thought and failed to notice that Angela was now walking at his side. When he moved, he almost bumped into her.
“That’s the first time I’ve ever felt like a guardrail,” she complained. “Everyone has this idea that policemen are as adept as cats at picking up signals.”
“I was thinking.”
“If somebody mugged you, you’d walk away with no idea that you had a dagger between your shoulder blades.”
Soneri gestured to her to drop it. She took his arm. “Are you still thinking about your wife and that other man?”
He had not been thinking of that, but her words made him remember putting the photograph in his pocket. He could feel it there, rigid inside the cellophane, every time he groped inside his duffel coat. He had stared at it several times, perhaps hoping to get used to the truth it revealed.
“I’ve just discovered that Avanzini is the owner of the flat next to the Pensione Tagliavini.”
“So? You mean he could have been dropping in to do his screwing there rather than at Ghitta’s?”
“No, in all probability we’re dealing with something much more complex and disturbing. I believe they’ve created a kind of no-man’s-land there where nobody could live any longer. There are only offices and immigrants. Everything’s much easier when there’s no-one around to stick their nose in.”
“Very true. In this city they sell drugs by the kilo.”
“That’s a matter for the Drugs Squad. Did you know that Ghitta left everything to Fernanda?”
“What about her man? He stayed close to her all his life, and then . . .”
“Women are like that . . . they play the victim for years, but then they stab you in the back.”
He felt her warm breath in his ear. “You’re a shit,” she said, with no trace of humour.
“I don’t understand why it was Fernanda.”
“Maybe she’s only a cover to conceal the real heir,” Angela said when they had sat down in the bistro where she went in her breaks from work.
The same idea had occurred to Soneri. But who was Fernanda standing in for?
“Diet this evening,” Angela said, and he did not feel like contradicting her.
“You get better food at the clinic for dyspeptics,” Soneri said after they had eaten, his appetite still intact.
“Your mind’s elsewhere,” Angela said resentfully. “You’re only pretending to think about the investigation, but in fact you’re focused on Ada.”
“Unfortunately, there’s not a world of difference between the two.”
Angela held out her hand. “Let me see the photographs. You’re carting it about with you as though it were a holy relic.”
Reluctantly Soneri took out the photograph of his wife embracing another man.
“Do you recognise him?” Angela said.
Soneri shook his head.
“You know what I think? If this whole affair really is gnawing away at your insides, make it your business to find out who he is. You’ll see it was a girlhood crush which your wife hid from you becaus
e she thought nothing of it.”
Soneri was on the point of giving a reply from the heart, but caught himself in time. He did not want to confess that he was afraid, like a gambler who fears showing his cards. He said nothing, unable to engage in small talk. Angela looked at him for a few moments, then lost patience and announced that she was going to bed. “I’ve always despised those women who wag their tails imploring their man to pay them attention,” she said as she left.
Soneri followed her as far as the exit, and stood in the piazza watching her walk off without even saying goodbye. He was fond of her, but had no idea how to abandon himself to his emotions. The very thought seemed to terrify him.
As he too walked away, all other thoughts faded from his mind, leaving only the one obsession – to find out who the man in the photograph was. Angela’s advice spun round in his head like a refrain. He headed in the direction of Via Saffi, considering breaking into Fernanda’s house and looking once more at those black-and-white snaps, slices of a lost life, but in Borgo del Correggio he saw Pitti and changed his mind. He decided to tail him. On this occasion, Pitti was dressed in an overcoat tied tightly round the waist and stretching below his knees, dark pinstriped trousers and well-polished black shoes. He had the usual bowler on his head and was carrying a walking stick.
Pitti turned into Via Petrarca and once more entered the building which contained the headquarters of the Avanzini Company. The commissario waited in the same place as the previous evening. The script was the same as before, except that now Soneri was beginning to detect some pattern in the trajectory which Pitti traced out, probably every night. When he came back down, he walked towards Via della Repubblica but did not stick to the quiet lanes near the main thoroughfare. Instead he crossed into the narrow streets on the far side and came out at Borgo Reale, entering a bar where the light was a pale bluish colour, allowing the profile of couples at the tables to be made out through the windows. Back on the pavement, his next call was Borgo Felino, where he stopped at no. 14, rang the bell and went up. Soneri let a few minutes pass before going over to the doorway. Beside the fourth button from the bottom, he read La Maison s.r.l.
A few slivers of Parmesan cheese in a bag which Alceste had made up for him were all he had left, and as he waited in the cold he took them out of the wrapping. The waiting went on for over an hour, leading Soneri to conclude that this was not a routine visit. Then he remembered the photographs, and gave up the sentry duty. He made his way back to Via Saffi and crossed Piazzale dei Servi, where he heard the squeaking wheels of Fadiga’s trolley. At that time of night the district took on a spectral appearance, with water dripping from gutters and the dark windows staring blindly out onto the street. He had the impression that everything was waiting for something to happen, but with no idea what it could be. Nor could he do anything but wait, like a hunter in a shooting stand.
He fished Fernanda’s keys out of his pocket and went into the house. The shutters of the shisha bar on the other side of the street had already been pulled down and it was in darkness. He climbed the staircase noiselessly and opened the door. It was cold inside and he kept his duffel coat buttoned up as he sat down in the living room, staring at the envelope into which the old woman had stuffed the photographs at random. He spread them out on the table like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and began searching for the face of Ada’s mysterious boyfriend. There were so many photographs, mainly of young men with long hair and a hunger for life in their eyes. When he picked himself out in one group photograph, he was surprised that someone had frozen a moment of his youth and that he had found it by chance in an envelope which had been set aside by an elderly woman who had come looking for him in vain.
He continued patiently wiping the dust off the snaps with a handkerchief, pausing from time to time over some images which brought back a flash of memory. There passed before him fleeting images of a lost world populated only by the young, with all the carefree junketing of student life, the cheap clothes mended at home or else passed down from older brothers and sisters.
In one small photograph he found a group including Ada and, at the far right, Marta Bernazzoli. In yet another there was Ada again, this time near a bonfire in the country, holding a pan filled with roasted meat. He turned the photograph over and read RIGOSO, OCTOBER ’74. They all seemed happy. He studied the faces closely and it was then that he again noted the mysterious friend. He had failed to recognise him in profile, with his long hair. Something now began to gnaw at him. He picked up the envelope again and began putting back the pictures, thinking all the while of that last snap taken at Rigoso. Why had they gone there of all places for their party? Was Ghitta involved?
On the outside of the envelope he noticed the name of a man whom he remembered as small, elegant, plump man, who went around with a large camera topped by a gigantic flashbulb bigger than his head. Trombi was known simply as “the photographer”, and for many years his pictures featured in the local paper for which he did some work. His archive in Via Angelo Mazza was the best resource for the recent history of the city.
A noise on the stairs made him jump. He felt a sense of guilt over wasting time on an enquiry which he knew was purely personal and perhaps even futile, but had he not told Angela that could not find much of a gap between the investigation into the death of Ghitta and the other one he was conducting into the death of Ada? Had he not been on the point of throwing in his hand for exactly that reason? Meanwhile the sound on the stairs took on a familiar ring as he recognised Elvira’s high heels. He clearly heard her arriving at the pensione, the clink of her keys followed by the clatter of the door being shut.
He was unsure what to do. Was it better to wait, as he had been doing up till now, or take action and confront that woman who had been lying about everything? In his indecision, he followed his instinct and stood listening to Elvira’s movements next door. He made out her voice, with intervals of silence, and assumed she was on the telephone. Shortly afterwards there was another voice, but it must have been the radio or television because the voice fell silent and music started up.
Soneri began to feel uneasy. He went over to the window and stood staring out at the night which seemed to be suspended on a cushion of mist, it too waiting for a gust of wind to clear it away. He was thinking that Via Saffi was like the dry bed of a river, when he saw a man walking slowly in the middle of the road. As he came closer, Soneri recognised the figure of Pitti. When he was level with the shisha bar, he stopped on the pavement outside No. 35. A few moments later, the commissario heard the door bell ring inside the pensione with the same sound it had made all these years previously. A sense of déjà vu overtook him as he waited to hear the click of the lock being opened downstairs. Nothing happened, but then he remembered Mohammed telling him that sometimes they would ring and go away only to come back and ring again. Perhaps this was a device for guaranteeing that the coast was clear.
He could imagine Pitti making his nightly round of houses in the district, crossing Borgo Gazzola and greeting the prostitutes on his way into and out of Via Saffi. A few minutes went by until Soneri again heard the ring of the bell, accompanied this time by the click of the lock. He heard the outside door open slowly, the hinges creak, Pitti’s footfall on the steps as he came closer, the door of the pensione opening and finally the bang as it was slammed shut against the other half of the double door.
At first he could not hear anything. Even the music had been switched off. He then heard what sounded like a zip being pulled open, followed by Elvira’s voice coming over loud and clear, like a sharp note suddenly soaring above the drone of the brasses. Soneri struggled to hear what sounded like a monologue, but the thick walls of the old house were no help. Pitti must have been totally passive, judging by the absence of replies, or at most would have been mumbling in the same frightened tone he had used when Soneri interrogated him on the steps of the church after meeting him in the darkness of the chapel of Sant’Egidio.
He obviously said
something, however, judging by the way Elvira raised her voice yet higher. Soneri was pleased at Elvira’s crescendo because it permitted him to make out some of what she was saying. He clearly heard her several times repeat, “So you went to the Abbess”. The word “money” came up a few times, thrown in at the end of the sentence. They seemed to be quarrelling, or more probably she was remonstrating with Pitti who, Soneri imagined, would put up with it without reacting. He could see him, head bowed, fearful, incapable of stringing two words together. Then there was a pause and a hush fell over the building, and when Elvira started up again at the same pitch as before, the commissario understood that Pitti must have made an objection. She started castigating him again: “You didn’t get there in time . . . Fastlast was in a hurry . . . you wasted time with that . . . he made you put on what?”
Pitti had plainly missed an appointment or something important and now Elvira was humiliating him by jeering at his homosexuality. He could not make out the rest, but he picked up enough from her offensive, scurrilous tone. He was a puppet and she the puppeteer. He imagined Pitti running all night from one spot to the next in the city centre, and then late at night turning up to meet that woman whom everyone described as cynical and cold. Silence fell again, but this time a longer silence than previously. Perhaps everything had been said, but why then did Pitti not leave? Soneri listened but there was no sound, until, after an interval, he heard the zip being pulled and then a kind of thud, followed by a whine which sounded like suppressed weeping. It was Pitti and those moans suggested a mixture of fear and apology. This went on for a few moments until the commissario heard Elvira bellow imperiously, “Get out!” in a voice heavy with rage and contempt. The outside door opened delicately and slammed shut loudly, and this too made it clear who was in charge.
8
HE DECIDED TO let things take their course. He was convinced that sooner or later the situation would burst into flames of its own accord, so there was no need to light a fuse himself. With these thoughts in mind, he went quietly back down the stairs and set off home. When he got there, the clock on the campanile of the Palazzo del Governatore was striking two. He felt nothing but a deep sense of relief at having reached the shelter of his own den, and to help him relax he lit a cigar and heated some water to prepare a camomile infusion. As he sipped it, he looked out at the silence of the night, one of the things in life which gave him the greatest pleasure, and pondered the mysteries concealed in that mist-interred world: Fernanda’s disappearance, Ghitta’s murder, Dallacasa’s death, Elvira’s scary cynicism, and finally Pitti scuttling about all night like a creature on the prowl.
A Woman Much Missed Page 13