Blood in the Snow

by Franco Marks

  “Paride, let’s keep to the facts. Either you co-operate or I’ll take you in for questioning. But it won’t be me questioning you – I’ll let those detectives who are buzzing around town do it. They might be interested to know that you buy your petrol cash in hand and wank yourself off while you’re spying on couples who are making out in their cars.”

  Paride’s smug expression vanished and he rubbed his hands several times on his cap to wipe away his daily sins, but he was as greasy with deceit as the jerry can of used oil. He stank like a flooded carburettor.

  “Let’s go inside the booth so nobody can hear us.”

  “But there’s nobody else here.”

  “Better if we’re out of the way, Valdiluce has ears everywhere.”

  In the booth there was a smell of smoke and petrol, the light on the card machine, a tin full of coins, a ballpoint pen wrapped in insulating tape. The place was so small that they were face to face. From his breath, Marzio realised that Paride had eaten sausage with a lot of mustard, all washed down with beer and at least three glasses of Ginpin. White Wolf was annoyed by this messing about, it was making him waste time.

  “So?”

  Paride looked at him blankly, and Marzio went in on him heavily.

  “Speak, for fuck’s sake!”

  “On the night of the crime, Saturday, the blonde girl that you know, the one who was with you—”

  Very annoyed, Marzio interrupted him.

  “Elisabetta, her name was Elisabetta. She had a name!”

  “Elisabetta, exactly. A pretty nice body, blonde hair, I recognised her from the photo in the newspapers. I saw her, but she wasn’t on foot.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely. I swear.”

  “So?”

  “She was in a black Mercedes 320 coupe with a man beside her.”

  “Are you sure of what you’re saying? Maybe you didn’t see properly in the dark, it might have been someone else.”

  “Inspector, I’m not an amateur. What kind of Customs would I be? I’ve got to live up to my reputation. If I’m the Customs it means that everything that passes before my eyes is checked, filed away and memorised. Nothing escapes me.”

  “I doubt even the real Customs could identify a person inside a car while it speeds away.”

  “I saw them later too,” Paride added, slyly.

  “Please don’t fuck me off. Tell me the whole thing, in order.”

  “I closed the gas station a few minutes before seven, I set off in my car, and on the way home I saw the same Mercedes that had passed earlier parked on the pull-in by the Scialoia bend with a man and a woman inside. At that point I could see them clearly. They were arguing. It looked as though he, who was quite robust, was trying to hurt her. I turned off the engine and I went closer to see what they were doing. I thought that maybe there was a problem and I could help the girl.”

  “We all know you went to spy on them.”

  “That’s not true. I went to look because the blonde, your Elisabetta, was shouting at the man who was trying to undress her. He had her by the wrist, she pulled away and got out of the car crying, the man followed her. I heard a few sentences, he said to her, ‘You have to stay with me and that’s all there is to it. You’re my woman’. And Elisabetta shouted, ‘No! I’ve found a man I love, it’s over between us’.”

  Paride paused infuriatingly.

  “You know, I was wondering if the other man Elisabetta said she loved was you…”

  For a moment, Marzio drifted away. That probably explained the haematoma around Elisabetta’s wrist. But who was the man? The husband? Why hadn’t she ever spoken about him? It was strange that at six thirty, having just left his arms, she’d had arranged to meet this person. White Wolf was pale. Paride had the upper hand again.

  “Inspector?”

  Marzio came back from his thoughts and continued the interrogation.

  “Did they hit each other? Was there a fight?”

  “This Elisabetta was really pissed off. He was scared. He changed his approach, tried to kiss her, but she told him where to go.”

  “Did you see this man? Describe him.”

  “Very tall, with a blue coat and red moccasins.”

  “His face?”

  “I couldn’t see it very well – I think he had black hair and a French accent.”

  “Then what did they do?”

  “They got back into the car. I followed them because they were going the same way I was. They stopped in the square in front of the Pino Rosso, Elisabetta got out with a big paper bag, then went into the bar without saying goodbye.”

  Marzio already had enough clues, but he decided to test the Customs.

  “Do you remember the car’s registration number?”

  “You underestimate me, Inspector.” Paride the petrol pump attendant opened his hand as though it were an oyster. He showed his palm to Marzio. He had written some letters and numbers there in biro. He didn’t betray his reputation.

  “EB745LP.”

  10

  It started to snow. The flakes began to fall, light, sparse, on tiptoe, as though not wanting to disturb anything. It had been so long awaited but now it almost seemed to annoy Valdiluce.

  The town needed to think about itself, about its problems, its uncertainties, while the snow started life back up again. It ignited the dreams of the owners of the chair lifts, the bars, the hotels. It was useless, even harmful, because it would make Valdiluce discover the reality into which it had fallen. No tourists, all winter holiday bookings cancelled. The death of the four women had splashed the town with mud. The only guests were the curious, those who morbidly visited the area around the Bucaneve. Undertaker souls seeking the thrill of death, all that remained of them was litter and leftover food discarded in the beech forest.

  Marzio ventured onto the road. The Vespa was agile and, swerving and slipping, its small wheels moved perfectly between the frozen mounds. It had taken the snow to bring him out of the tunnel – it gave him a childish pleasure.

  He wanted to dream and to sleep – to use the whiteness to cancel out all the bumps that blocked his mind. He turned off the headlight and let the snow triumph over him, soaking him with its cold fingers. The street lamps gave off a strange brightness, and the flakes fell dancing, invading the space in the sky. It looked as though it were snowing beneath the moon. White Wolf stopped the motor. There was the touch of the snow, a silent buzz, like a beehive nestled in the clouds. The snow was covering up the resinous smell of fir trees, but it would never hide what had happened, all those imprudent things. In an instant it would have swallowed up the bad smells, the evil thoughts, the polluted air, the stinking exhaust fumes of the Vespa, remodelled the ridge of the mountains, sculpted the contrast with the blue sky, but it would not wash clean Valdiluce’s conscience.

  Marzio stopped in front of his small wooden house. Finally white, before it had simply been a shack without a view, like a cabin on a beach without a sea. He breathed deeply and let himself be oxygenated. On the roof, two crows stood in front of the chimney, revelling in the jet of hot air emitted by the central heating. They behaved lovingly towards one another, drying their feathers and pecking each other’s heads, happy. In the blast of heat they looked like a couple on holiday at a spa resort.

  Marzio parked the scooter and made to go into the house, but under the lamp he noticed footprints leading towards the front door: deep, those of somebody very big, with beside them an indentation in the snow every thirty centimetres, lateral to them. They could only belong to a man who walked with a stick. Another strange mark appeared in front of them, perfectly central to the prints of the two boots, sometimes appearing then disappearing. Under the branches of the fir tree in Marzio’s garden, the mark became more evident – the stranger had stooped to pass. Something had touched the snow. You didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to solve this mystery. The tip of a long beard, the stick, the weight. It was Don Sergio. The priest of Valdiluce.

/>   “Don Sergio? Don Sergio, I can’t see you. Where are you hiding?”

  Marzio followed the tracks carefully. The priest had come to the door, he must have rung the bell or knocked, but in any case he had come looking for him. Why? Behind his cabin he found more footprints, then they disappeared on the road that was now covered by the unceasing snow.

  Marzio started his Vespa again and raced to the church, wanting to face Don Sergio immediately. The snowflakes painted the bell tower with indolent brush strokes, a canvas coloured in by a child. While he was putting the scooter up on its stand, he saw a shadow slide furtively from behind the rectory. It ran towards the woods with brusque steps, its body bundled up, curved, oscillating slightly. At that time of night it could only be Agostino, the custodian of the Bucaneve who was also the sexton of the church of Valdiluce. Perfectly normal for the local weirdo – his strange way of going on was normal for them all by now. Even for a wary inspector like White Wolf. Marzio knocked loudly on the rectory door. The priest opened it. Illuminated by the street lamp, he looked like a wizard out of a fairy tale.

  “What do you want at this time of night?”

  “You tell me, Don Sergio. I saw that you’d come looking for me.”

  “Actually I—”

  “Your beard left a mark in the snow around my house.”

  Don Sergio seemed more irritated than surprised. “Let’s go into the church.” It was very cold. The lights were dim, the walls peeling. They went through the rectory. There was a smell of sausage cooked on the fire, beans, dust, old paper. Hanging from the wall were various priestly clothes, some sumptuous. It was like being backstage at a theatre. Don Sergio rolled his beard around his neck like a fur scarf.

  “I’ll be back in a moment, I’ve got some beans cooking.” Marzio sat down on a pew below the great painting of San Gualberto, the protector of Valdiluce. Ever since he was a child, he had been frightened by the saint’s stern look, his gruff face. The small, unadorned altar, with just two faded flowers in the vase, an unlit gas heater. Further on, lit by a candle, was the confessional. Marzio recalled his first communion, when he’d fallen into the clutches of Don Sergio. Wrapped in his beard, he’d looked like a sly cat waiting for unwary prey. Marzio had never been much of a one for talking – his grandmother used to say that they needed a pair of pliers to pull the words out of him – and he had remained silent, partly because he didn’t think he had ever sinned.

  “Get a move on, lad! I haven’t got time to waste, what have you been up to? Have you stolen some chocolate, taken the lord’s name in vain, looked up the teacher’s skirt…”

  Marzio was sweating in torment. He leaned his head against the grate and through the small holes felt Don Sergio’s beard caressing his cheeks. It smelled of tobacco and incense.

  “Have you been touching yourself?”

  Marzio wasn’t exactly sure what ‘touching yourself’ meant.

  “Touching in what way?”

  “Have you been wanking?”

  Marzio turned as red as a pepper. He managed to get hold of some of Don Sergio’s beard. The hairs coming through the grating made his nose and cheeks itch. He began to knot them together, sticking them together with his saliva and rubbing them between thumb and forefinger.

  “Never.”

  “Well, if you haven’t touched yourself, you must have committed some sin – greed, anger, sloth, envy. Come on, I doubt you’re a saint.”

  After many hesitations, spent knotting the priest’s beard, Marzio finally confessed.

  “Yes, I have sinned.”

  The priest’s eyes lit up like two pieces of coal. They burned through the grate.

  “Come on, then. Confess.”

  “I played doctors and nurses with Antonietta.”

  Don Sergio came shudderingly to life, and his voice grew salacious.

  “So? What did you do?”

  Marzio recounted his meeting with the girl. And meanwhile, he knotted, knotted…

  “… if I jumped down from a branch she would show me her panties.”

  “And then?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What do you mean, nothing? What did you do you do to her, did you touch her?”

  “No. I looked at her panties.”

  “Lying’s a mortal sin. Tell me the truth. Did you take them off?”

  “No, I swear.”

  “And does that sound like a sin? I haven’t got time to waste. Next time you come you’d better have something to tell me, otherwise—”

  Don Sergio made to leave the confessional, but his beard was a prisoner of the thousand knots Marzio had woven into it during the confession.

  “What the devil has happened?!”

  The confessional shook under the priest’s imprecations.

  “Help, help me get free.”

  It took the barber to disengage Don Sergio from the grille. It was an event in Valdiluce, another story to tell. And of course, the event weighed upon relations between the two – which were never particularly friendly and contained plenty of rancour. Don Sergio returned and sat down in front of Marzio. He chose the less authoritative position, on the small stool that was used for lighting and putting out the candles. It was a strange atmosphere, what with the smell of wax, boiled beans and unwashed beard. The cold, poorly lit church. Marzio felt like starting in on him, “Have you got anything to confess?”

  The situation had in fact been turned on its head, with him on the pew and the priest on the stool. A small revenge for the past. After all, he was a police inspector, and he actually could have asked him that if he’d wanted. But he chose a less demanding question.

  “Have you got anything to tell me?”

  “I gave the four girls the extreme unction. They looked calm, but it’s easy to imagine that there was some drama behind their appearance.”

  “Have you any other information? Have you heard anything new? Do you have any news for me?”

  “Death hides the mysteries of life. With those four girls it’s almost as if they’ve been wiped away. And I imagine that you’re trying to bring to light the complexities that many think there are.”

  “What do you think?”

  “In all honesty, I’ve no information that would imply it wasn’t a suicide.”

  “So if you don’t have anything to tell me, why did you make me come? Why did you come looking for me at my house?”

  Don Sergio smiled, put his beard on his knees like a cat, and began to caress it. His movement added a smell of dust and dandruff to the cold air. “I was overcome by a momentary urge, a fleeting desire. I’d been wanting to tell you something for a long time, write you a note. But it seemed pointless and inappropriate.”

  “Listen, Don Sergio, I haven’t got much time at the moment, and I’m not looking for other knots to untie – tell me, or I’ll be on my way.”

  “I notice that there are still a lot of policemen sifting through the past and present of all the inhabitants of Valdiluce, the DNA, fingerprints and laboratory analysis. Continuing to dig might uncover buried mysteries. I was worried that something would lead back to me and that I’d be forced to tell the truth about an event that concerns you and I prefer you hear about it first.”

  Someone else barging into his life.

  “Does it have any bearing on the investigation? If not, I’ll be off.”

  “The most distant things are always the closest.”

  With that sibylline phrase he forced Marzio to listen. With irritation.

  “You might have come to know facts that no one has ever confessed to you, perhaps told you by some out-of-town detective. I’d rather tell you myself. It concerns your family.”

  Marzio watched the priest with meticulous attention – he wanted to work out what he wanted.

  “It’s nothing to do with today, it’s from our past. And you might not remember, you were so small. Do you recall your mother disappearing from home for fourteen days?”

  “Of course I do, I remember it perf
ectly.”

  “And do you know what she did while she was away?”

  “I know she came back, there weren’t any mysteries or secrets about it.”

  “She ran away with me.”

  Marzio froze.

  “I took her to Lourdes, in secret, because your father didn’t want to. She was a pious woman, it was her dream. We went together in my old Fiat Seicento. We visited the city, prayed.”

  Marzio did not understand what Don Sergio was telling him. Had he and Elisa been lovers, companions on a pilgrimage? Had it been a fling? Everyone knew Don Sergio had a thing about sex, but imagining him with his mother Elisa, a woman who was so unfeminine, so closed in on herself, always dressed in those grey housecoats with blue spots, standing next to the stove… In the long evenings, had she planned that unexpected act, the only one of her life? One morning she had disappeared, saying nothing. His father, Alfredo, waited in silence, didn’t give the alarm, didn’t tell anyone. He pretended that Elisa was ill and kept the fire burning in the stove because he didn’t want people to think anything funny was going on. Marzio was very small, but he remembered his father always being at home with a cigar in his mouth, waiting, in front of the door. When Elisa returned, confused, tired, she’d looked like a mangy cat, and she never said what had happened in those fourteen days. And the family resumed its usual silence.

  “Why are you telling me about it now? What’s the point? No policeman would ever ask you to disclose such personal facts that are buried in the past.”

  “Because I need to confess to someone too.”

  Irritated and offended, Marzio stood up.

  “That was a gratuitous thing to do. I’d rather not have known. I don’t understand why you decided to bother me with it.”

  “White Wolf, I’m old, I’ve got heart problems, I’ll soon be dead and you might find out the truth.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You policemen often use DNA, I’ve seen how science works and how easy it is to do tests in private clinics. I’d like to die with a clear conscience, to be sure through DNA analysis that you’re not my son. Or, if you are, to finally embrace you as a father.”