River of Shadows: A Commissario Soneri Mystery (Commissario Soneri 1)

by Valerio Varesi

  “We put up with it occasionally, but give it half a chance and it’d be all over us.”

  “We’ve taken more water in through our ears swimming in the Po than through our mouths drinking the stuff,” Vernizzi said. “Like the owner of this place, who can’t hear a thing now.”

  “There’s some people I could mention that have taken in water through the holes in their arses,” Ghezzi sniggered.

  The commissario smiled while his eyes continued to run over the walls where various Falstaffs and Othellos stood out against a background of heavy clay streaked with white lime, the colours of a good Felino salame. His eyes fell on a life-size, medium-quality fresco of a Christ executed by some mad artist. The face seemed to express not so much pain as the anger of a man cursing and swearing, while his sturdy, oarsman’s arms seemed capable of tearing the nails from the cross. When the commissario looked lower, he saw that the artist had painted the legs folded over, crossed slightly beneath the pelvis.

  “You’ve noticed it too,” Barigazzi said sarcastically. “Jesus Christ did not die of cold feet.”

  Guffaws rang out around the table and created ripples in the Fortanina in the bowls.

  “It wasn’t always like that,” he said, turning more serious. “It happened in ’51, with the flood.”

  The commissario looked around all the tables. The chances were that not one of them was a church-goer.

  “You don’t hold back with your jokes,” he said.

  “It’s not a joke,” Torelli protested. “Even the priest agrees, and he made the old women believe it was a miracle.”

  “The thing is he might be right.”

  Soneri shook his head to say it was time to stop. He felt himself trapped in the middle. He had come to pose questions, and now he found himself in a bizarre situation. The wine was inducing a mood of euphoria in him, while the talk spun round him like a gauze bandage immobilizing him layer by layer.

  “I don’t believe in miracles,” Barigazzi said, turning serious. “But nobody can say who redid Christ’s legs, not even the bar owner himself. He found them like that when he got back to his osteria after the flood water receded. They say it was some street artist who did the painting standing up to his knees in water.”

  Soneri looked back at the Christ. He looked like an Indian holy man, but there was nothing blasphemous or mocking about him. “It’s strange to see an image like that here, where no-one goes to church,” he almost said.

  “We don’t go to church and we can’t stand priests, but he,” Barigazzi said, pointing at the painting with deep respect, “he was a man who underwent suffering, like us.”

  “He taught us not to kill,” Soneri said.

  The three, suddenly suspicious, looked up for a moment and stared at him: “You don’t really think that we …”

  “No, I don’t. But they did kill Tonna’s brother.”

  “Decimo?”

  “Yes.”

  The conversation halted and even the music paused. The din of the osteria took over. None of the four asked any questions. Their mood was now serious and only Vernizzi murmured, “That’s certainly strange,” and he seemed to be speaking for the others.

  There was a silence for a few minutes, which Soneri passed listening to the somewhat acerbic Verdi of “I Lombardi alla prima Crociata” before Barigazzi found the courage to venture: “So in your view, Anteo too was …”

  The commissario first stretched out his arms then moved his face closer to Barigazzi’s square, high-cheekboned face. He was not wearing a beret, and this showed off his still thick but whitening hair. “I’m not sure, but as we set aside other hypotheses, I’m almost beginning to grow convinced.”

  The other drew back and seemed lost in thought. From the expression on his face, the commissario deduced that he had been very convincing.

  “Until this moment, I had been under the impression that the current could have carried the barge downstream and through the arches of a bridge, but you’ve undermined this conviction and with it any real possibility that we’re dealing with an accident. You have simplified the hypotheses, but complicated the story.”

  Vernizzi and Torelli nodded in the style of a priest hearing confession.

  “So then,” Soneri started up again, “There must have been someone on the barge. Someone who knew what he was doing, who knew the river well enough to be able to navigate at night-time, in the dark, using only the tiller. Someone who started off from the boat club, casting off the moorings, giving the impression that the rising water of the Po had made the barge break free, or else that Tonna himself had decided to sail without engine or lights. After all, that was strange, was it not? But to make this last hypothesis credible, there needs to be some indication that there was a boatman on board.”

  “The light,” Barigazzi said. “The light on the barge was switched on a couple of times while it was on the river.”

  Soneri smiled at this confirmation, while the music rose in a crescendo at a crucial point in the opera, even if he couldn’t recall exactly which. It was the first supposition which stood up, but it was followed immediately by the realization that it was worthless, no more than a straightforward deduction from facts which he had not yet sifted.

  Barigazzi looked at him. “Commissario, do you see the Po? The river is always smooth and placid, but deep down it’s turbulent. No-one ever thinks about life down there, fish struggling for survival in an unending duel in the murky depths. And everything is endlessly changing, according to the whim of the water. None of us can imagine those depths unless and until we end up scraping against them. Dredging is always provisional work. Like everything in this world, wouldn’t you say?”

  4

  ANGELA KEPT HIM awake during the return journey to the city, twenty minutes winding through the mist which followed the rain, her voice cutting into his brain and setting off electric shocks each time the Fortanina threatened to carry out its digestive and somniferous duties. He had failed to call her at the agreed hour and this had been taken as a sign of indifference. She was not as yet entirely accustomed to his lapses of memory, and if she were, he would have viewed that as a matter for concern. When he came off the telephone, he tried to call Juvara, but had insufficient battery on his mobile, as he was advised by a slightly mocking, double bleep. He tossed the implement on to the seat beside him, but before he had time to get worked up about it, he was turning into his own driveway.

  He collapsed into the armchair in the living room, lit a cigar and surveyed the apartment. This was his favourite moment of the day: slippers, pyjamas, dressing gown and his own home, always the same. The house where he had grown up, the house complete with furniture his parents had left him, all unaltered after so many years. When the day was done, he had the impression of escaping to a place whose map was known to him alone, and where he could think freely, leaving everything outside in a street which he saw as grey and featureless, as though through a windowpane with trickles of water running down it.

  Angela had asked him if he would be coming back to the city or staying by the banks of the Po. He did not know. He could have decided there and then, but he felt he could pull either end of that particular ball of wool and arrive at the same point. However, the banks of the river seemed to offer the least demanding of the alternatives, and anyway, the barge aground at Luzzara, sealed off by the carabinieri, needed to be inspected.

  He grabbed the telephone and placed it on his knees, just at the moment when it began to squeal like an animal in pain. He recognized Juvara’s voice. “What is it? Can’t you get to sleep?” he asked, glancing at his watch.

  “I didn’t expect to find you at home. Your mobile is switched off.”

  “The battery’s dead.”

  “Tomorrow, will you be in your office or down at the Po?”

  “I’ve got to look over Tonna’s barge.”

  “Do you need a hand?”

  “No, you carry on delving into Decimo and I’ll attend to Anteo. I guess t
hat working on two fronts we might make more headway.”

  “Tomorrow Nanetti hopes to get the results of the tests on the blood from the broken windows in the ward.”

  “Good, let me know.”

  “I will, and don’t forget to recharge your battery.”

  Once again he awoke very early and found himself seated at the edge of the bed before his eyes were properly open. By the time he got to the coffee-maker, he decided he should have his blood pressure checked. Whenever he was on a case, it invariably shot up, and this time, to make matters worse, he had to cope with Alemanni and his scepticism. If he were to fail, every single one of them in the H.Q. would hold him responsible for the fiasco and for giving the old magistrate the chance to bring his career to a glorious end by humiliating a commissario of the squadra mobile.

  The mist had settled on the roofs as he journeyed along the deserted, early-morning streets. Once out of the city, he observed the swamps in the flat countryside from which it appeared impossible to take off for the skies, since the skies with their vapours had descended to kiss the earth. He had yet again to present his identity card before he was allowed to pass the security barrier and drive on to the embankment. On the road, he met lorries, vans and tractors loaded with household goods coming in the opposite direction, all fleeing the threat of the barely contained flood waters several metres above the vulnerable plain.

  From the elevated road, the river seemed boundless, like a mud-coloured sea confined inside a system of dykes. The current was flowing approximately two metres below the summit of the main embankment, and on top of it rows of sandbags had been lined up to provide extra protection. The barge appeared before the commissario between leafless branches tossed this way and that by the current, an enormous, squat, rusting monster on which there was only one thing that could be called new – the word tonna in big letters on the bow. At first sight, it looked like a catfish, with a cover over it as flat as the plain and only the wheelhouse sticking up at the stern. For the rest, all that stood out were the topsides of the hull surrounding the deck and a few small vents to allow air into the hold.

  Soneri parked amidst the puddles below the embankment, within sight of the barge, now circled with mist. From time to time, it rose and fell in the current, but this movement, far from being a sign of life, seemed the death throes of a moribund beast.

  He had moved only a few paces forward when he noticed the carabiniere car. A youthful officer, plainly suffering from the cold, got out. He showed him his identity card, and the man pointed to the gangplank and helped him hoist it on to the deck. The commissario noted the solid marine hawsers holding the craft in place, while the young officer, with fussy deference, removed the seals from the cabin and, after a lengthy struggle with the spring handle, opened it for him. Soneri advised him to keep his gloves on and not to touch anything until the forensic squad had been able to examine the interior of the barge. The officer remained at the entrance, stock-still.

  The cabin was somewhat cramped. The helm, only slightly larger than a car’s driving wheel, held pride of place. Through the windscreen, the deck and stempost were clearly visible. The instrument panel, with its fuel, oil-pressure and engine-temperature gauges and an array of light switches stood to one side. Alongside the steering column, there was a conduit for the cable that activated the combustion-chamber pre-heat plugs, as with old-style diesel engines. Behind the column, there was just space for a seat and a trapdoor leading down below.

  He climbed down a companionway, short and steep as a ladder. He pressed with his knuckles the switches in the small corridor which led to the two berths, but no light came on. He was forced to pull out his torch to shine some light on the stale, dusty environment which suggested to him an old, abandoned family tomb.

  The first berth he saw was almost bare. Apart from the unmade bed, there were some comic strips on a shelf, a crumpled-up windcheater and some old newspapers. There was neither a window nor a porthole for observing the river or for letting in light. Everything added to the feeling of asphyxiation: the gloom, the ceiling which scarcely allowed you to stand upright, the claustrophobia and the general air of neglect which hung over the barge, starting with the rust which was now so ingrained as to have become the dominant colour.

  The other berth was plainly the one where Tonna himself slept. It too was bare, but it seemed to have been abandoned only recently. Apart from a few other things, it contained one little item of wooden furniture of such style that it stood out like a jewel in a pile of junk. Four tiny drawers opened in front, each with handles as minute as buttons. Soneri took out his handkerchief and opened the top drawer, where he found nothing but bills for the supply of diesel oil. In the second, there was a register in which Tonna had recorded the details of each voyage and of the cargoes he had carried up and down the river. The third contained yellowing postcards and photographs of the barge, together with a user’s guide to the vessel. Finally Soneri bent down to open the bottom drawer, where he found bobbins, needles and threads of various colours. Hidden among them, he found a note in an unaddressed, unsealed envelope. He read a few words, as mysterious as the life which had been lived on the barge. The Kite has nothing to do with it: the decision was taken higher up.

  He stood there for some time, scrutinizing the somewhat laboured handwriting which clung to the page like a creeper to a wall. He then replaced the note, written on cardboard which might have been torn from a shoe box, and put the envelope back in the drawer.

  It occurred to him that putting a face to the Kite and placing those arcane words in some meaningful context would give a new momentum to the inquiry, but around him there was nothing but darkness. He came out of the cubicle and climbed the steps two at a time until he regained the deck. In the thick fog, he made out the figure of the carabiniere alongside the gangplank, guarding a vessel no-one wished to claim.

  He went back down to Tonna’s quarters. He pulled open the drawer containing the register of the times he had sailed the river and the record of the cargoes loaded and unloaded, and examined it once more. It looked as though Tonna had done a great deal of work, shuffling up and down between Cremona and the mouth of the river. He took the register with him and went out on to the deck, moving over towards the hatches from where it would be possible to check the cargoes. He went over to a round flap and had to use all the strength in his back, both feet placed wide apart, before he could get the lever to budge. After a while the cover came away with a sudden jerk, permitting him to peer into the darkness of the hold.

  With his torch, he examined the cavernous space. There was not a trace of the cargoes of wheat he had been told about in the boat club. Before him lay the deep, wide, rusty emptiness of the belly of the barge, a cave between the sky and the water on which nothing floated. He pulled the hatch shut, and flicked through the register. There was an entry for three days before which stated that a cargo of grain had been loaded at Casalmaggiore and at the port of Cremona, destined for the mills of Polesella. Soneri looked over the side at the immense river which coursed by, treacherous and heedless. It carried with it a small boat with no oars, dragged away from its mooring by the river in spate. At that moment Soneri remembered the dinghy.

  Briefly he reconnoitred the perimeter of the barge, looking over the low bulwarks. There was no sign of the dinghy. As he made his way back to the cabin, he noticed a couple of rings soldered on to the hatch covers and some ropes worn by the passing years. The rust had been rubbed away at one point, leaving the metal shining. The dinghy had been removed only recently from where its keel, swaying from side to side in the slow movement of the barge, had for so many years left in its wake a track as clear as the trail of a snail. Someone had taken the helm of the barge, and when he could no longer maintain control or when he had decided it was time to make off, had escaped by dinghy. Perhaps Tonna? But why? Or perhaps someone who had considered the riverbank at Luzzara the best place to make an escape? Barigazzi had been right: a barge could not navigate f
our bridges by itself.

  He clambered again along the gangway. The force of the water beneath him, causing the barge to shift, was terrifying. From that position, Soneri looked out over the plain where the grass was at a lower level than the shoals of fish around him. The carabiniere replaced the seals over the entrance to the cabin.

  “I am sorry to have to ask you to keep constant watch,” the commissario said.

  The police officer looked at him untroubled. “We’d have to do it in any case.”

  “Why?”

  “The prefetto wants us to keep an eye on the riverbanks to see that nothing’s happening. It wouldn’t be the first time someone attempts an act of sabotage.”

  “Sabotage of what?”

  “Of the embankments,” the carabiniere said. “There are some people who, when the water rises, do not leave the river to decide where to overflow. They make an opening for the water, on the opposite side from where they live, obviously. They flood their neighbours to save themselves. A sort of blood-letting to ease the pressure on the river, and to hell with everyone else.”

  The commissario looked along the extra metre of embankment made up of sandbags and reflected that it would be child’s play to cut an opening in it when the water had risen to that level. The current would do the rest. He said good-bye to the carabiniere who got back into his car, but his thoughts returned to the opening which he would like to be able to make in the inquiry. The note had been written recently. The piece of cardboard and the envelope it was in were still quite white, unlike everything else aboard the barge, which had the feel of neglect and age. The register he had handled had yellowing pages and curled-up edges, as well as blots and dark marks. The Kite had only recently come on the scene to trouble the thoughts of Tonna the boatman. But to whom did that nickname belong?

  Nanetti called him as he made his way back from Luzzara. “The blood on the windowpane does not belong to Decimo Tonna,” he said without preliminaries.