by Franco Marks
“What’s this ball?”
Osvaldo looked touched. “Dik used to love them. I always used to make him a ball with the hot wax machine. He’d play with them for hours. He used to love playing.”
“But isn’t it toxic?”
“Course not, I only use natural ingredients and lots of paraffin, it’s all harmless. No fluorinated gasses. Dik had been playing with those wax balls since he was a puppy, he’d never had a problem with them. It was like playing with a candle, plus I made it so hard that it rolled like it was made of marble. You’d have a job scratching it.”
“Do you always make the wax mixture yourself?”
“Of course. Except sometimes – but with there being less skiers nowadays it happens less often – when she’s not busy at the hospital, my wife Morena comes to help me.”
“Has she been in recently?”
“I haven’t been well these last few days. I was feeling bad, I had palpitations. I stayed at home, because there weren’t any customers anyway. Morena kept the shop open.”
“So Morena took your place?”
“Yes. We could just have closed. Apart from that horrible thing with the girls, trade has dropped off something terrible. If it goes on like this, Valdiluce will go out of business.”
Marzio sniffed the mixture that was in the waxing machine too.
“What happens when the waxer’s running?”
“Do you want me to turn it on?”
“No. Just explain the various phases to me.”
“I put the pieces of solid wax in this slot – silver, orange, white, depending on the type of snow – then I turn on the machine and in a few seconds it gets very hot, the mixture melts and I apply it to the base of the skis using these rollers.”
“Can’t you smell this scent of bitter almonds in the mixture?”
Osvaldo leaned over the waxer and sniffed for a long time.
“No – it smells like the normal smell to me. But I haven’t got much of a sense of smell because I broke my nose when I was a child. Can you smell it?”
Marzio didn’t answer. Cyanide. Attempted murder. It was certain. It seemed that in the coils of the investigation, which had come to a standstill, new and unexpected facts were about to emerge, complicating the already intricate scenario like a maze. The rope that held together the life of the small town had slackened, insane goings on, misunderstandings, conflicts and crimes were taking place. And there was the snow sickness too – by now, the snow was six feet deep. That unhealthy state of non-colour flooded through everyone, wiped clean your mind, altered your spirit, shattered the norm. To a detective like Inspector Marzio Santoni, who looked for mathematical logic in every case, it felt as though he were travelling through a mad world, where all of the numbers had broken free of their constraints and were now running around loose. What he had to do was go back to being White Wolf. Trusting the wind, the moon, the sky. Turn back into a bio-detective.
*
“More fucking mysteries? You lot in Valdiluce must really not know what to do with yourselves. And now you’re telling me to come back there for a dead dog – does that sound normal? What would I be coming to do, exactly? Inspector Marzio Santoni, you lot are becoming a bit of a pain in the arsoni. There, I’ve even made it rhyme for you.”
“Dr Soprani, I don’t have a choice. We’re talking about attempted murder. We certainly can’t ignore it.”
“The murder of a dog? Are you joking?”
“The attempted murder of a man. Someone tried to kill Osvaldo, the owner of the ski rental shop on the square, as well as – for a week – the lover of Stefania, one of the four girls…”
Soprani realised that it was serious. He went so quiet that Marzio thought the line had gone dead.
“Mr Soprani, can you hear me?”
“I can hear you.”
“Dik the dog died after being poisoned with cyanide. The wax ball he played with every day was poisoned. We analysed the contents of the container of the waxing machine and found poison. It seems clear to me that someone wanted to kill Osvaldo and not the dog. When the waxing machine is operating it emits a lot of steam, and with the heat the cyanide becomes dangerous. The murderer wanted the fumes to kill Osvaldo slowly. He was lucky that recently there have been very few skis to wax – his life was saved because tourists have stopped coming to Valdiluce. By an unfortunate accident, while Dik was playing with a ball of wax, he must have swallowed some fragments, and been poisoned…”
“Has this story got something to do with the four women?”
“I think so. It’s a clue. I think it’s an indirect result, like a knock-on, a side effect of the tragedy.”
“Santoni, how many times do I have to remind you? The suicide or the accident! In a few days we’ll have confirmation of it – the case is about to be closed. An accident and that’s it. If you have an idea, go ahead. And since we’ve nearly concluded the case of the four girls, it’s your turn now. At least solve this one, earn your salary. And don’t let me know until you’ve found him, this potential killer.”
“Her.”
“If you say so…”
Who could want Osvaldo dead? The profile of the aspiring murderer was written on the snow in large letters. A relative, familiar with the wax machine, with a strong motivation to get rid of her husband, and able to easily get hold of cyanide. It could only be her. Morena, Osvaldo’s wife, a nurse at Vicosauro Hospital, from whence she could easily have stolen the poison. Easy enough to add cyanide to the wax mixture, an operation that she had certainly repeated for days. Perhaps that was even the reason her husband wasn’t well – it was the first symptoms of poisoning. Palpitations, nausea. Morena! That intimidating, dynamic woman who was as strong as a man. Marzio kept in his memory the indelible recollection of the time she, along with the other blueberry pickers, had tried to rape him. Even the other people in the town avoided her. She was always trying to start fights, attacking anyone who came into her sphere. Unable to handle normal relationships, she had been suspended several times by Vicosauro Hospital for mistreating patients. She had only returned to the wards a few months ago.
Marzio stopped by Paride’s to fill up. The petrol pump attendant had his usual pedantic air, and he wiped handfuls of grease onto his dirty hat as though to lubricate his thoughts. He smelled of Ginpin and slices of salami. He must have recently eaten a sandwich. With a sly air, he wobbled over with the same old question in his mind: shall I tell him or shall I not tell him?
“News?”
“Apart from Dik’s death, Inspector, nothing.”
“Very sad for everybody.”
“Dik was a real friend. He used to arrive at quarter to seven every morning, on time, as if he were coming to fill up his tank. He’d lick my hand and then he’d disappear into the woods.”
“Spit it out, Paride.”
“Dik’s already spat it out, and Osvaldo was about to, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“That Osvaldo was about to cop it, and I wish it had been him instead – I liked Dik more.”
Unbelievable. He knew about the attempted murder even though they’d ordered a complete blackout. In another life, Marzio would have been better off running the petrol station and Paride – The Customs – being the police inspector.
“Who could have wanted him dead?”
The attendant opened his arms and made an innocent, childish sound, as if to say ‘I don’t know, I never knew and I never will know’. Marzio couldn’t stand his gloating manner. He started the Vespa angrily and sped off, trying to spray as much smoke over Paride as his old scooter could produce. The petrol station attendant shouted over the noise of the muffler.
“Morena’s waiting for you at her house.”
Paride threw his certainty. The whole town thought like him, too, even Kristal, who never spoke, had whispered to Marzio, “Morena’s a monster. Only she would do something like that. Don’t you agree?”
By now everyone knew. Osvaldo’s w
ife, a nurse at Vicosauro Hospital. Capable of anything.
She had ruined the life of her poor husband, who, crippled by fear, blindly obeyed her. It was said in the village that she occasionally beat him. The only time Osvaldo had treated himself to a breath of fresh air with another woman – Stefania – he had found himself wound up in a terrible, unbelievable tragedy. A normal peccadillo had become the object of a judicial investigation, and more besides.
“If Morena knew about my relationship with Stefania, she would kill me.”
Marzio found Morena in her house by the stove. There was a lot of smoke as though she hadn’t been taking care of the fire for a while. The odour of badly burned beech, perhaps suffocated by ashes that hadn’t been cleaned out for a long time. She sat folded up in an armchair. She seemed to be unconscious.
“Morena.”
Marzio called her name several times, but she gave no sign of life. He approached her cautiously, touching her lightly on the shoulder, on the raw wool sweater. He shook her gently. She was like marble, as though dead.
Inspector Santoni shuddered with despair. Another corpse in Valdiluce. It was like falling into a crevasse. The woman’s hair looked like an uncultivated bush, a halo of bristly fibres. He tried to touch it, to turn her face towards him. There was no need: Morena slowly turned her head. Her eyes had lost much of their usual pride. She was crying. She was alive, at least. For Marzio it felt like leaping up from the bottom of the crevasse to the solid ridge above. Slowly, she stood up. Tall and imposing. The scythe-like eyes, ready to slice through other people’s gazes, the oblique flashes of moon, of metal, had all disappeared. Morena was almost a woman. She moved closer to Marzio. Her face – devoured by the cold and consumed on the mountainous ridges of madness – expressed an ancient nobility. A tragic mask, like one carved out of fir wood. Armed with senselessness, she made a sudden gesture: she suddenly embraced him. She clutched White Wolf to her until he was breathless. She cried, sobbing on his shoulder.
Marzio was uncomfortable. He felt as though he was participating in something wrong, some peculiar procedure. He had sometimes been embraced without warning, supporting the body of a mother to whom he’d had to communicate that her son had been killed in an exchange of gunfire. But this he didn’t understand. He was on the alert, because, even though she seemed sincere, Morena always might be full of unexpected violence. Her breath smelt like fasting. Calmly Marzio let the outburst play itself out. Morena went limp. Just a few tenuous tremors. Inspector Santoni detached himself from her broad, formless body. Her sweater, her headscarf, her hair, all tasted like smoke. He looked at her. The pain had made her almost beautiful. Or at least dignified.
“You’ve come to arrest me.”
Marzio answered impulsively. Morena wasn’t the type you fenced with.
“Yes.”
She turned away from him. Santoni tried to reassure her.
“Why are you crying? At the end of the day nothing irreparable has happened..”
Morena wrapped herself in her shawl as if a misfortune were blowing in the air. She went back to being ugly and vulgar and began a long chain of blasphemies.
“What do you mean, nothing irreparable has happened, you piece of shit? My poor Dik! I loved him, he was my best friend. Why? Why is he dead?”
Morena’s disjointed movements had raised smoke and ashes, and the air was becoming unbreathable. There was no time to be surprised, so Marzio took the situation in hand. He got straight to the point.
“Morena, did you put the poison in the waxer? Did you try to kill your husband, Osvaldo, with cyanide?”
Morena fell silent. She hadn’t expected such a direct question, but now she had run out of time. With the calmness of the furious, she replied in a voice from hell, “I’ll show you.”
Slowly, heavily, she staggered forward. She rested her hands on the kitchen table, walked around the corner, then stopped in front of the large drawer. Marzio was on his guard: she might have a weapon, a knife. He drew back and she very quickly opened it and, deftly, threw onto the table many pages of newspapers and spread them out. She started shouting.
“Look, read them, read them. In your opinion, was I supposed to live with this humiliation?”
Marzio knew them all – he had read those articles, he knew them almost by heart. They contained the transcripts from when Osvaldo was questioned in the police headquarters. All supposedly secret, but, as was always the way, the journalists had obtained them illicitly and they’d been published with great fanfare. They reported the details of the moment of intimacy between Stefania and Osvaldo, when she had bared his feet and licked his big toe. Morena looked at Marzio. There was a smell like a wildcat.
“I got it all wrong. I should have stabbed that pig of my husband of mine right away. I should have shot him, but I wanted to be smart, wanted to play with poison. Great idea – my sweet Dik ended up dying, the only one who loved me. I’ll never be able to stroke him again. And at the same time, that pig is alive and free. Take me away now, because if I see him I’ll kill him. It’d be worth doing a few more years for murder. I’ll be going to prison anyway.”
She slumped back down in her chair crying. There was something human in that abandonment of hers, as helpless as poor Dik, another victim of the malaise that was afflicting Valdiluce.
14
Someone had smashed the taillight of the Vespa. It was one of the few things that could send him into a rage. He’d have come out with some colourful language if he hadn’t been so respectful of God, Our Lady and of all the saints…
Marzio cared deeply about that old scooter. It stank of petrol and made loud popping noises as it plodded along, but it had the heart of a thoroughbred. A warhorse that had seen many battles. There was nothing left of the light, just red plastic fragments scattered across the snow like a wreath of flowers in the cemetery.
It was odd. An impact would have shunted the scooter forward. It would have fallen over, and instead it was still upright on its stand. The prints of the rear tyre would have been evident in the snow. There was no damage to the rest of the Vespa. Now he looked at it carefully, it could only have been done on purpose, using a hammer or a stone. He walked around the scooter in search of a solution to the mystery, his anger just as raw. And Marzio was annoyed by his phone too, which for some time now had been telling him that he had received a text message. He read it.
I broke the taillight of your Vespa. I’ll see you at my house after office hours so I can settle up for the damage. Olimpia.
That was all he needed – the most eccentric woman in Valdiluce. Completely off in her own world, people said she was clairvoyant. Thirty-five years old, never married, never been seen with a man. And she wasn’t bad looking either. Beautiful features, blue eyes, a nice body, refined, almost aristocratic ways. But her elusive mind was intimidating. She worked at the post office. When she was at the counter, it could take up to thirty minutes to complete a transaction or send a money order. She was the slowest person in the world. She often raised her blue eyes towards the sky, staring at something on the ceiling or behind someone’s shoulders. But nobody ever complained about her being distracted by these invisible presences.
“You have to leave Olimpia alone when she sees the ghosts.”
Incredible stories were told about her. Once, when she was with Ambra, the owner of the Miramonti hotel, Olimpia had gone into a trance.
“Leopoldo the butcher is your lover, I can see it with absolute certainty.”
“You’re wrong, my dear – I’ve never cheated on my husband, let alone with him, the butcher…”
Ambra had continued to deny it, but a few months later the scandal had broken: Leopoldo and Amber were found making love in the woods by a mushroom hunter. Once again, Olimpia had got it right.
Because of her, so to speak, supernatural abilities, she had been called in immediately by some of the Valdiluce locals over the tragedy at the Bucaneve. Had the four women actually committed suicide or had they be
en killed?
In some way, the odour of a murder hovered over the town. Few believed in the story of the suicide for they had seen the four happy girls walking along the road, being courted by the local lads. Given her obliging disposition, Olimpia had not attempted to avoid letting herself be drawn in, and had been spending much of her time at home these days. The image of the four women had begun to emerge more and more vividly and over the course of an extraordinary night, those who passed by her house saw lights of many colours flashing in the rooms. Something incredible had happened, and so she had staged the small accident with the Vespa so as to force Marzio go to her house.
Olimpia’s home was as tiny as a dolls’ house with a wooden interior full of knitted figurines, knick-knacks and a bell. It smelled of hot tea and when Marzio turned up at the door and tried to enter, she called out, “Stop,” and held a pair of pink slippers out to him. “Take off your shoes.”
A strong smell of wax and toffee, something that recalled childhood. Marzio walked slowly after her, the slippers on his feet. Olimpia wore a bright pink dressing gown. White Wolf sat down in the rather elegant living room. At the back of the room there were some trophies – someone in the family must have been a good skier. In the soft light, her eyes glowed brightly. She seemed happy to have the inspector all to herself. The atmosphere was strange, ambiguous. Marzio went straight to the point.
“So how did you break my taillight? There were no signs of an accident, what happened?”
“I didn’t know how to contact you. I didn’t want people to know that White Wolf had come to me without a good reason – everybody always knows everything around here. So I faked an accident with the Vespa, but I actually broke your light with a stone.”
Marzio lost his temper.
“What the hell… you smashed my taillight just so that you could talk to me – you’re crazy!”
“Listen, I’ll reimburse you for your taillight. Don’t get angry, because I’m about to reveal who the killer is.” Olimpia, imperturbable, poured him a glass of Ginpin. “Made with my own hands…”