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

by Valerio Varesi

  “Commissario, are you trying to give me a headache? After a sleepless night, with this pile of charcoal here, you’re in the mood for talking in riddles?”

  Aricò was right. Rather than talking to the maresciallo, Soneri was simply thinking aloud. “It’s like this: Tonna was transporting illegal immigrants. The cargoes of grain which appear on the registers were only a cover.”

  Aricò turned more serious and pulled the peak of his cap over his eyes.

  “He owed something to the traffickers, whoever they were, and that’s why they came after him. When they didn’t find him, they left a little warning. So, they think he’s still alive and they believe he’s giving them the run-around.”

  “Are you sure that’s the way it is?”

  “It can be, yes. But I suspect there’s more to it than that,” said Soneri. “But I’m giving you a free hand. The matter of the illegal immigrants is your case.”

  Aricò pushed his cap further back and leaned on the door of the van, peering into the dark cavity of the burned-out bar. Soneri left the piazza in the direction of the jetty. He climbed up the embankment and when he was near the elevated road, he heard the buzz of the engines. At the entrance to the club he could see Barigazzi in knee-high boots. He went down the slope to the yard.

  “You’re not over in the piazza?”

  “Been there already.”

  “What do you think?”

  “It’s never happened before that they set fire to a bar or restaurant. When something new happens, there’s something sinister behind it,” the man muttered, making no effort to disguise his pessimism.

  “Is the niece’s family clean?”

  “They go about their own business, same as everybody else. Money is the only religion here nowadays. The husband of Tonna’s niece is a right-wing councillor. I mean the new right wing, the shopkeepers’ right wing, one which has taken off its black shirt and put on a tie.”

  Barigazzi spat on the road as he always did when he disapproved of something, expressing unease at living in a world which was too deeply changed. All that remained for him was the Po, his landscape, the mist and that little corner of his past which opened up inside the doors of Il Sordo.

  “I met Dinon sculling among the poplars,” Soneri said. “He said he was checking how far the water had gone down.”

  The old man looked at him in amazement. “No, he would have been checking on the memorial to the partisans. The river damages it every time.”

  “Do you mean to say there’s a memorial on the floodplain?”

  “Always has been. A monument to the comrades who fought along the Po.”

  “And Dinon takes care of it?”

  “Him and that group of his who call themselves orthodox communists, and who believe they’re the only ones with the right credentials for the custody of the monument. In fact, we do it too. We’re well mannered towards each other and choose different days.”

  “How many are there besides Dinon and Vaeven?”

  “Very few now,” Barigazzi said in a derisive tone. “A tiny group of nostalgics who meet every so often in an old shoemaker’s shop to adore the bust of Stalin.”

  “So much the better for them. At least they’ve lived their lives hoping for the revolution. It was worse for Tonna who had only memories and frustrations to live on.”

  “Tell me the truth,” Barigazzi said. “He was in deep trouble, wasn’t he?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Along the Po everybody knows everybody else, word gets around. From what I hear, he didn’t carry very much grain. However, he did a lot of boating and a barge like that costs a lot of money. In other words, the money must have come from somewhere.”

  “I have to agree with you,” Soneri said. “This mist covers more and more mysteries.”

  “The valley is wide and there are fewer and fewer people about. There are houses where nobody knows what’s in them, nor even who lives there.”

  The commissario turned away. “How much water is there left on the floodplain?”

  “A metre and a half. You’ll see the bottom by this afternoon.”

  Even where they were standing, the air was still heavy with the smell of burning. The smoke had mingled with the mist and together they formed a cloud which hung over the village. What had happened to the bar had galvanized everyone and this made things easier for the commissario. The questore would spend days chairing meetings and the press would pay no more heed to the toxic leaks from Alemanni.

  “What would you say to going out over the floodplain in your boat?”

  “We’d risk getting stuck in the middle, or beached on a sandbank or banging into a tree trunk. It’s a fishing boat that I’ve got …” Barigazzi said.

  “If there were two of us, we could manage.”

  “What has brought on this appetite for a bit of tourism?”

  “You started it. Did you not tell me to wait until the waters were less muddy?”

  Barigazzi fixed a sharp, penetrating look on him, but he said nothing. Only when the commissario was ten steps away did he shout after him, “Come immediately after lunch, before the waters drop too far.”

  Soneri walked towards Il Sordo, through air still rank with the stench of the embers which swept up the streets and under the arches. He was passed by large saloon cars, their lights flashing. He recognized the chauffeurs from the prefettura. He too had been summoned to a meeting in the questura, together with the questore, the prefetto and the mayors of the towns on the plain. Official anxiety had returned to the levels it had been at when the Po was threatening the houses.

  Before going into the osteria, he called Juvara. “Have they left you all on your own? They’re all here.”

  “More or less … Is this fire going to help clear things up?”

  “Yes, but only up to a point.”

  “What does that mean? The questore is persuaded that it’s the work of the gang that did for the Tonna brothers.”

  “If they had killed them, why would they have torched his niece’s bar?”

  “Maybe she was mixed up in it too …”

  ‘Tonna was carrying illegal immigrants from the delta up to the cities on either side of the river. Some hours before they burned the bar down, they came looking for him on the barge. That means they thought he was still alive and double-crossing them. They didn’t destroy the boat because it might still be useful. There’s no safer or easier way to deliver immigrants into the heart of the industrial zones than by transferring them from one vessel to another offshore in the delta without the inconvenience of berthing. Minimum risk and maximum profit.”

  “Commissario, you have to go and tell this to the questore. They’re all convinced that this means people-trafficking has arrived in these parts and that the two brothers were bumped off by a bunch of gangsters.”

  The ispettore was right. He knew the kerfuffle that they could get into at headquarters every time something out of the ordinary, like this, happened. There was the risk of them opening a new, useless line of inquiry. In addition, he thought that Aricò would certainly have sent in a report on Anteo Tonna’s trafficking and at that point the circle was closed. He kept his mobile in his hand for a few minutes, unsure whether to call the questore immediately or to wait. The meeting in the questura was at 4.00 that afternoon. Perhaps he would manage to get down to the floodplain and back in time.

  The landlord in the bar was wearing his hearing aid, but the means of communication were not much different. Soneri had to make use of the sign language he had learned from Barigazzi. There was no-one in the osteria and perhaps that was why the owner had his hearing aid switched on. Watching him shuffle between the tables, it occurred to Soneri that he must know a great deal about life in the town, about Tonna and about the past. Perhaps he even knew the Kite. It was for this reason that he had asked Barigazzi to take him out on the floodplain. He wanted to examine the monument and read what was inscribed on the marble.

  As he made his
way to the jetty, the Fortanina wine was still bubbling in his stomach. Barigazzi was waiting for him.

  “We’d better get a move on,” the old man said. “By this evening the water will be too low and I might not manage to get the boat back to the jetty.”

  They stepped aboard and, as a precaution, Soneri sat down while Barigazzi set his feet wide apart on the bottom boards, a position which allowed him to manoeuvre without moving his upper body one centimetre. They arrived at a point a little beyond the pumps, disembarked, raised the boat with the winch and lowered it carefully on to the other side, into the waters of the flooded plain.

  “You see? The undergrowth is beginning to appear,” Barigazzi said, pointing to the first branches emerging from the water.

  “There’s enough to keep us afloat,” the commissario said.

  “Not everywhere. The land on these plains is irregular and there are no navigation lanes.”

  The light was very faint, even though the poplar trees were totally bare. The mist seemed to be trapped in that spiderwork of branches, or perhaps the shade was caused by the embankments which shut off that stretch of flooded land. They passed the great outline of the stone-crushing plant, with its gantries and enormous skips, a kingdom of rust and mud on which the water had spread the fresh stain of its passage. With a few quick strokes, Barigazzi rowed through the trees which would remain damp until the first foliage appeared. The thrusts of the oar made the boat skim along smoothly, and when necessary, the old man turned the oar on its side behind the stern, using it as a rudder to give more precise direction.

  At a certain point, Barigazzi stopped rowing and, standing quite still, without uttering a word, raised his arm with his index finger outstretched. Soneri saw a low column of white marble emerge from the water like a fleshless bone, its colour clashing with the surrounds.

  “We can’t go too close,” the boatman muttered, “because it’s not very deep there and the monument is planted on a raised piece of land.”

  They approached as near as possible until the bottom of the hull rubbed against the sand. Soneri made out the words clearly: TO THE PARTISANS OF ALL FORMATIONS WHO FOUGHT AND DIED HERE OPPOSING BARBARISM. There was nothing else.

  “Who erected it?” he asked.

  “The old Party,” Barigazzi said, “when we were all still united.”

  “Why here where the water comes and goes?”

  “The floodplain was the place where the partisans were able to move more easily. Once it was full of trees and undergrowth, but when needed there was the Po to get them out of trouble.”

  A sense of mystery emanated from the monument and from the spot on which it stood. The commissario reread the words engraved on the marble and became aware of the contrast between their solemn ring and the dialect speech of Barigazzi. It was at that moment that he recalled the words uttered by Tonna’s niece about the telephone call and some mysterious person looking for Barbisin, her uncle. The man had spoken excellent dialect, but had stumbled over his Italian which he pronounced with a foreign accent.

  Barigazzi began to circle the monument. In the stillness, mud had settled and the water was now much clearer. Soneri looked for other marks on the marble, but there was no inscription save the one on the side facing the Po. The commissario leaned out of the craft to touch the marble, risking losing his balance. He moved back in and looked over the side of the boat.

  There was something dark below, something which, even in its vague outline, seemed to him like a body. He had seen so many that it was sufficient for him to take one more look to be sure. A body which must have been held down by a weight. The hem of something that looked like a cloak was moving gently with the undulation caused by the boat. The commissario stood up, turned to Barigazzi and pointed to the shape beneath them: “He didn’t get very far.”

  At first the boatman did not say a word but then he murmured: “I never thought that he had run off.”

  Soneri took his mobile from the pocket of his duffel coat and dialled the number of the forensic squad.

  “You’ll have to come back to the Po,” he said to Nanetti. “And this time you’re going to get your arse wet.”

  He then called Aricò. It was the officer who replied and told him that the maresciallo was in bed.

  “Get him up. Tell him we’ve found Tonna’s corpse.”

  “Right away,” the officer said, swallowing hard before hanging up.

  Soneri sat back down in the boat and looked over at Barigazzi to seek his advice. In reply, the other man stared back and shook his head. “We couldn’t manage with just the two of us. It must be tied down and we’d have to go underwater to cut the ropes. It’s not going to be easy, because as soon as anybody touches the bottom he’ll disturb the mud and then he’ll see nothing.”

  “How long will they take?” the commissario said, looking over at the pumps.

  “By tomorrow morning there’ll be nothing but a few puddles.”

  “Push over to the embankment,” Soneri said. “I’ll take the short cut.”

  Barigazzi took the boat to the bank, between two bushes. Soneri jumped out, rocking the boat so violently that the old man had to press down with his oar so as not to capsize. “People who move that awkwardly always end up at the bottom,” he shouted to Soneri before moving off among the poplar trees.

  As soon as he was out of earshot the commissario took out his mobile and called the questore. He would ruin the afternoon ceremonial of tea and cakes, with secretaries scurrying about and the inevitable grand orations against organized crime. The mincing secretary was exasperatingly obstructive until Soneri, with the vaguely menacing tone he used with criminals, told him in no uncertain terms to put him through to the questore.

  A fresh burst of Madonna santa!s with audible exclamation marks. “Of course, go right ahead … Yes, yes, all the necessary inquiries into the case … Certainly, mobilize the forensic squad …and the frogmen …” And, finally: “Keep me informed!”

  His superior evidently had no inclination to muddy his shoes. The commissario’s had a double layer of earth clinging to each side, allowing the pebbles on the pathway to attach themselves. He crouched, as he had done the preceding afternoon while waiting for Dinon Melegari’s boat. The light was failing minute by minute like a fade-out on a cinema screen, and down there, where the bright marble was now emerging, the water was doing its work, eating away at the body of Anteo Tonna. He had spent his life on the water and now he was under its surface.

  The first to arrive was Aricò, his light flashing. The commissario asked him to switch it off for fear of attracting too many onlookers.

  The maresciallo had an ugly face resembling a map where the severe contours of mountains and unforgiving valleys alternated. “How much water is he under?”

  “A metre, perhaps less. But he’s tied down. Someone’ll need to go in and cut the ropes.”

  “I’ll call the divers; even in this town there are people with wetsuits.”

  For a few moments, the commissario pondered the best solution – to wait until the following morning when the pumps would have emptied the water from the plain, or else to bring the body up right away – but even as he was thinking it over, Aricò was already talking to someone who was promising to be there in a quarter of an hour. He felt a sudden, terrible unwillingness to move the body. He was afraid that he might miss something, that a piece of evidence might be destroyed. He looked around for Nanetti, but in the gathering darkness there was no sign of him.

  When the diver went under, he could see only a couple of metres in front of him, at least until Aricò aimed the police car lights into the water. The monument was now halfway out of the water, shining white. The diver walked towards it slowly so as not to disturb the sludge. He then went down on his knees, switched on a strong torch which he fixed to his forehead and plunged his head into the water. From the embankment, Soneri watched the illuminated water bubble and the hem of Tonna’s cloak come to the surface. Then, with the slowness of
bread starting to rise, the whole body came up, swollen with water, back first, legs wide apart, rotating slowly. The diver took hold of one shoulder and manoeuvred it to the bank.

  Only when they were at the top of the embankment and could lay the body on a plastic sheet did they roll it over onto its back. They were confronted with a waxen face, eaten away by the water and encrusted with slime. But it was him. When the commissario shifted his glance from the forehead, he realized that half the skull was missing. A deep cavity gaped open at the top, looking like a cut in an over-ripe watermelon.

  He tried to bring to mind the image of Decimo’s head, but his memory was blocked by the body in front of him, bones disjointed, stretched out under a yellow sheet. Then it dawned on him. He did not need to be an anatomist to recognize that there was a link between those two smashed skulls.

  “A savage blow,” the maresciallo said.

  “Indeed,” Soneri mumbled, “and not the first I’ve seen.”

  “I imagine,” said the other, without grasping the reference to Decimo.

  It was now pitch black. Only the commissario, Aricò and the officer remained beside the corpse. Not far off, the diver, still in his wetsuit, looked like a strange river fish, dripping with slime. The only light came from the headlights of the police car, around which wisps of mist were swirling. The smell of burning still hung in the air.

  “We have to inform the ambulance men and the magistrate before removing the body,” the officer said.

  Aricò turned towards the commissario, who nodded. At that moment, a car approached along the embankment road and when it was only a few metres away, Soneri recognized the vehicle belonging to the forensic squad. Before Nanetti could get out, the commissario turned in the dark towards Aricò. “Is there a chapel near here?”

  In reply, the maresciallo pointed along the embankment into the darkness, but Soneri understood perfectly. He remembered having passed it.

  When he turned back to look at the corpse, he saw Nanetti already bent over it with a little torch which gave out a light as white as the full moon. He recognized the procedures of the forensic squad, as unchanging as any ritual. With a grimace of pain and a creak of his joints, his colleague got to his feet. “I suppose you have already noticed the blindingly obvious?” he said, indicating the head. “Apart from that, I haven’t much to say just now, but at a guess it would seem to me that he died on the same day that he disappeared.”