A Woman Much Missed

by Valerio Varesi

  “He was one of the old guard,” the commissario said, making no effort to conceal his admiration. “Is it really possible for a man like him to chicken out and shoot himself?”

  Marta smiled and her cold expression changed into one of contempt. “Elephants are not afraid of lions, but they are scared of mice.”

  Soneri enjoyed the metaphor, although Avanzini was more like a sewer rat than a mouse. “Cornetti would have had to fight on terrain which was far from his natural habitat: shady deals, political friendships, corruption.”

  “Amintore Cornetti could never have done that, especially with the right in power,” Marta said. “But I don’t believe that’s all there was to it. Shortly before Mario was murdered, Amintore confessed to him that he felt out of things. He said he no longer understood the world around him.”

  “Including his son?”

  “What a weakling! He spent far too long in his father’s shadow, and couldn’t find any better way of breaking free than fighting with him about everything. He went so far as to turn himself into a petty right-wing arriviste.” She jumped to her feet and started walking about the room in the grip of an agitation she struggled to control. She stopped beside the window, looking out anxiously.

  “When all’s said and done, Cornetti was great right up to the end,” she said. “He had the courage to take a decision many of us would like to, but don’t have the guts for. Here too he was in a class of his own.”

  “Everybody’s got to play their own part. Just think how useful you could be to other people, with the skills you have.” Soneri was fumbling for words in an attempt to console her.

  “You can’t be useful to other people if you feel you’re a burden to yourself. I’m an atheist. What hope can I have? I believe that everything will come to an end, and if even this world rejects the prospect of improvement and becomes the sewer it’s turning into, what’s the point? Isn’t living in these conditions harder than dying?”

  The commissario felt as though he was caught in a whirlpool, and that there was only one logical outcome. He was afraid of that conclusion, and as a distraction he took out the photographs Trombi had given him. “Do you recognise any of these people?”

  Marta gave a start, and then looked carefully at the images, turning them towards the light. Her eyes lost their cold look and turned softer. “This one is Selvatici, and the other . . .” She hesitated, turning to face Soneri. “He was a student – of engineering, I think. I believe he used to hang out at Ghitta’s.”

  “Can’t you tell me his name?”

  Marta looked embarrassed, like the time he had asked her about the abortions. “You’ve already asked me about this person. Why are you so keen to go ferreting about in the lives of someone you used to love? Let it be. It’s better for you and for those who can no longer give you an explanation.”

  “I agree. I wouldn’t have done it if this investigation . . . Look, it’s not a question of personal curiosity, but of professional duty. Maybe there’s a bit of nostalgia for those years mixed up in it all.”

  Marta seemed once again deeply troubled, and her eyes were veiled with tears.

  “I know his name is Andrea, but I don’t remember his family name. He was active on the extreme left. Mario mentioned him once or twice. A strange man whose father was a communist, but who grew up in Catholic circles. He took after the priests when it came to discretion. Never seemed to assert himself. He had to introduce himself afresh time and time again because no-one ever remembered him.”

  The commissario experienced the sting of jealousy. Mystery gave added substance to the figure of a man who revived phantoms which had barely been laid to rest. The deepening shadows outside made the light of the halogen lamps shine out more brightly, dancing on the metallic surfaces. The real blinding light was created inside the commissario by feelings which prevented him from reasoning and which made all lucid thoughts fade into dark regrets. It was better not to probe any more deeply. He said goodbye to Marta, even though he was perfectly aware he was taking flight. From himself and from his past.

  *

  “Any news?” he asked Juvara with some anxiety when he returned to the questura.

  “Our people are out looking for Avanzini, but he’s nowhere to be found. The Guardia di Finanza is after him too.”

  The commissario groaned and the inspector wondered if it was because he was annoyed at the setback or because he was not interested in the news. “I was talking about the rent-free apartment in Borgo delle Colonne.”

  “There are only a few more details,” Juvara said. “It’s not easy making enquiries in a place where there’s no memory. Nobody remembers, nobody knows anything.”

  Quite suddenly, Soneri felt as though he was carrying on his back the weight of too many things which all needed attending to. He turned away quickly and saw the afternoon mail lying on his desk. The envelope on the top of the pile was of the cardboard-pack type, which he opened to find a list of adjectives in the questore’s spidery writing. “My very best and heartiest good wishes for a Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year.” In a rage, he tore the card to tiny pieces which he tossed into the basket.

  “Why should I bother with people who’re trying to make me look like an arsehole?”

  “Cornetti had a three-year lease on the apartment in Borgo delle Colonne. I can confirm that no rent was ever paid,” Juvara said, in an effort to calm him down.

  “So why did they go to the bother of drawing up a contract?”

  “There was a sum of money stipulated in the contract, but Ghitta never received it. It doesn’t even appear in the balance sheets.”

  “For appearances only.”

  “Looks like it. And that’s before we come to the oddity of a building contractor who rents an apartment from someone else.”

  The commissario gestured with the cigar he was clutching between his index finger and his thumb. “Perhaps it was so he could put someone else there, do someone else a favour,” Soneri said.

  When the inspector gave him an answering look which implied agreement, Soneri realised he was in all probability not far off the mark.

  “What’s Maffettone been up to?”

  “Who knows? Not so much as a telephone call.”

  “The famous working relationship between the forces of law and order, eh?”

  “I’ve been looking into the property Cornetti owned,” Juvara said, following his usual practice of keeping the really important information to the last. He was one of those who always set the little cherry on the cake to one side in order to savour it at the end.

  Again Soneri made a gesture with his cigar, only this time with greater urgency, almost annoyance.

  “The company was on its last legs. For some years, Cornetti had not been replacing employees who retired and who were more or less the same age as him. By the end he had a very small staff, three or four journeymen who attended to the subcontractors.”

  “He went with the flow of the times. Avanzini didn’t have many workers either,” the commissario said.

  “Yes, but he still won the contracts, while Cornetti had to struggle on, clinging to any lifeline they threw him. For the most part he was on his own.”

  “Alright, we know all this,” the commissario said impatiently.

  “Personally he was not a rich man,” Juvara said, trying to carry on with what he wanted to say. “He had a flat in the Oltretorrente district, a car and a current account which was no different from those of his employees.”

  The commissario gave a scowl, sticking out his chin. “You’ll be telling me next he had money stashed away in Switzerland?”

  The inspector shook his head. “The fact is his ex-wife is extremely rich and there’s no knowing why.”

  “The one he divorced?”

  “Yes. They met when they were both in the party. She was devoted to him and always forgave him everything he did. They’ve remained in close contact, and in fact she still did secretarial work for him.”

>   “And she’s loaded?”

  “She has stacks of cash. Since there was no inherited wealth, it’s reasonable to suppose we’re talking about money put aside by Cornetti in her name, to prevent it being swallowed up in the event of bankruptcy.”

  “Were the company’s balance sheets clean?” the commissario said, lighting his cigar.

  “We’re working on that, but at first sight the whole thing looks to me like a total shithouse.”

  “Who’s on the job apart from you? Maffettone?”

  “We’ve got our own external consultants.”

  “What do you mean by shithouse?”

  “The figures don’t add up. There’s no question there were parallel accounts. A black economy, I mean.”

  “The same as with every company. With an unofficial black ledger, you can do things you could never put into the official books.”

  “If it comes to that, you can put anything in the balance sheets. All you need is to know how to dress it up,” Juvara said.

  “Yes, but it’s easier with a secret account, and you pay less in taxes. And then, since you can buy anything you want with money . . . Was that not how it was with Avanzini too?”

  Juvara made no reply, his head still bowed over the ledgers. “But what did Cornetti actually buy?”

  “How do I know. Perhaps he only paid out,” the commissario said.

  The inspector looked at him, but could not understand what was going on. Soneri’s face had that impenetrable expression he wore when he was he was lost in his own thoughts. Juvara decided to leave the next move to him. The commissario was thinking over what Marta had said about the finances donated to the party and then, after the split, to far-left groups.

  “I don’t believe he was like the others. For him, business was not totally devoid of ideals. Quite the reverse – business was often captive to his ideals.”

  Juvara was not sure what Soneri was getting at, but he grasped the underlying concept. “He was born into anarchist and communist circles.”

  Soneri nodded as he inhaled on his cigar. He was about to change the subject when he remembered that friend of Ada’s who appeared from time to time in Trombi’s photographs. He was on the point of asking Juvara to look into the matter, but a sense of guilt held him back. He got up and went over to the window, from where he could see that Via Repubblica had finally fallen quiet. The city was calming down and adjusting to the rhythms of the steam which at that moment was rising in spirals from plates of minestrone on tables all over the city.

  That thought was all it took to reawaken his appetite. He made his farewell and set off for the Milord. But he had no wish to take a seat in the main dining area. He preferred to sit in the kitchen and follow the conversation between the cooks and waiters, or to chat at intervals to Alceste. He was at home there. It was at dinner time that he still felt most urgently the longing to have a wife and children, but as he let his thoughts wander, merely sitting at table recalled so many other pleasing things.

  Alceste brought him a plate of minced horsemeat with oil, salt and lemon. “An injection of energy” was the comment that accompanied it.

  Soneri needed it. The temperature had dropped further and a freezing mist would soon paint the night white. The steam rising from the pans jolted his memory, and the Bonarda stimulated his imagination, making him think dreamily of that spirit which floated in the darkness like a ghost fluttering in the shadowy wings of some theatre. Later, when he saw the first nocturnal walker emerge from the darkness, he had the impression that he had before him a creature made of the insubstantial stuff of dreams, but he lost him in the labyrinth of lanes that made up the old city. Meanwhile, an insistent creaking sound signalled the approach of the trolley Fadiga was pushing ahead of him. In Via Saffi, he noticed that the shisha bar was still closed, but he carefully avoided passing in front of the pensione, preferring to go instead in the direction of San Giovanni Evangelista. He turned into Via Petrarca, and waited in the same place as before. When someone came out of the main door, he slipped into the entrance hall. Standing in front of the company’s entrance, he wondered if Pitti had a prearranged means of announcing his arrival, but after a while he decided he did not care. He knocked, at first gently with his knuckles but then more firmly with his clenched fist. After a while, the door opened a fraction, and a man with a distrustful expression peeped out. The commissario put his hand to the door and pushed, bringing Avanzini bit by bit into full view.

  “Who are you?” Avanzini stuttered, terrified.

  “Commissario Soneri, police.”

  Avanzini drew back, now resigned. “I was out of the city today. I have also received a call from a maresciallo in the Guardia di Finanza.”

  They went into his studio. “I told him I can’t explain the reasons for this suicide, and that I did all I could to head off the bankruptcy of Cornetti’s company. I brought him into several deals. There are papers . . .”

  “There are so many papers, including those that were passed on to you by officials, and which that ladyboy Pitti stuffed into certain suitcases.”

  Avanzini checked himself as he was about to speak, so Soneri went on. “Anyway, these are matters for the maresciallo, unless of course the officers in the Finanza ask me to cooperate with them in their inquiry.”

  Avanzini grasped immediately the element of threat in Soneri’s words, and gave a start. Short of stature and slightly overweight, he was as white and soft as a lightly boiled egg. He looked like a newly ordained priest. When they sat down, Soneri’s eye was caught by his small, ivory-coloured hands with little tufts of black hair on the knuckles, and could not help comparing them to Cornetti’s calloused, thick labourer’s hands.

  As soon as they were seated facing each other, Avanzini got in first with his reply to what he guessed would be Soneri’s first question. “I know what you’re all thinking, that it’s my fault. You interpret what you think people are imagining – in other words, that it was me that caused his downfall. Cornetti was well liked. He had qualities I lack,” he said. Soneri detected in him that bitterness common in self-conscious people.

  “You can hardly say they’re in the wrong, as regards the misfortunes of his firm.”

  “Cornetti was too pig-headed to realise that times have changed. He went about with a notebook writing down income and expenditure. He did his sums with a pencil,” Avanzini said.

  “That’s as may be,” Soneri silenced him brusquely. “The difference is that you had the politicians on your side and he did not. Is that what you mean when you talk about keeping up with the times?”

  Avanzini fixed him with a fearful, malevolent stare. “What I’m saying is that he would’ve gone out of business in any case, whether I was involved or not, but I do realise that people like me are destined to arouse hostility, while men like Cornetti are not.”

  The commissario saw what he was getting at. He was an introvert, the other a showman. He was a weasel, the other a red-blooded male. He had women only out of need, the other out of passion. He had grown up in the school of accountants, the other in the tougher school of life.

  “I deal only in facts, and these tell me that Cornetti killed himself in your office. There must have been some reason for that, don’t you think? Perhaps you believe that the buying and selling of public officials has nothing to do with it?”

  “It was they who kept on tormenting us with one demand after another. Otherwise they wouldn’t have given us any work.”

  Soneri sniggered. “I’d say it was all home-made, like baking. It takes two to tango, as they say. By the way, did you not party together in the Pensione Tagliavini?”

  Avanzini raised his eyes towards the commissario, as though afraid of some punishment. “You’re making me out to be some kind of monster, but you’re wrong. I’m no plaster-cast saint but nor am I . . .” His words trailed off with a vague gesture which was meant to indicate an unspecified someone.

  “Cornetti?”

  Avanzini made no reply. He
seemed unsure whether or not he really wanted to take a step which might cost him dearly. He clasped his hands to his chest, and gave a scowl of sheer malice.

  “He was no saint either. He paid the party as well. Have you any idea of how much money he tossed their way?”

  “He does not appear to have asked for anything in return. At the end of the day, they threw him out.”

  “You’re a bit on the naïve side for a police officer. Do you really believe that with the party in charge he didn’t receive some little favours?”

  “I wouldn’t rule it out, but I couldn’t prove it either.” The commissario was beginning to lose patience with this ugly little man whom he disliked more and more by the minute.

  “If you want to know the truth, Cornetti went to rack and ruin by a different route. It was because of the company he kept, not because we cut him out of deals.”

  “What does that mean?” Soneri said, drawing deeply on his cigar.

  “Have you any idea how happy he was to work with us? Our systems and the contracts we won didn’t upset him in the very least. I can’t stand the way he’s made out to be someone morally incorruptible while I . . .”

  “So he did go with the times,” the commissario said.

  “No!” Avanzini bellowed, his wavering treble voice rising to a sharp crescendo. “He dealt with us because he still held on to the dream of revolution.”

  For a moment Soneri remained silent, smoking and wondering how to fit that piece of information into a framework he could still not fully grasp. It then occurred to him there must be a link with the extremists.

  “Even if he did finance certain extreme left groups, it was definitely not because there was anything in it for him. It only caused him trouble,” Soneri said.

  “Those were corrupt circles as well, commissario. These are individuals who would not hesitate to issue threats, and at times follow them up. You know what I think? In the final analysis, he was their hostage, and that’s why he killed himself. To divert attention from all that, he committed suicide in my office. A great piece of theatre, typical of the man.”