Inspector Cataldo's Criminal Summer

by Luigi Guicciardi

‘That’s right.’

  ‘What about the others, they confirmed it?’

  She shakes her head. ‘They’re not involved. They really did see us get in the car together and leave…’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then I understood…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That he wanted to end the party in a motel. He wanted to let off steam with me… on top of me… all his resentment, his jealousy… just to forget it all.’ She speaks quickly, almost mumbling. ‘But I understood…’

  ‘That there was no love in his arousal. It was just tension, and anger.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He does not tell her that Calabrese, the sharpest of them all, was right: all that drinking was not merriment, it was envy, rancour. Rancour for the person who had used him, many times, the person who was being fêted that night…

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I said no, I got out of the car. I walked away.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In the dark?’

  ‘I know how to look after myself.’

  ‘I’m sure you do.’ He looks at her with respect, ‘And Giulio?’

  ‘I don’t know… I only know that he turned the car around and went back, after throwing insults at me. He was out of his head and I was worried about him…’ And in a quieter voice, a whisper, she adds, ‘I think he went back to the party.’

  And then he left later, thinks Cataldo, this time with Zanetti. And they took the same road.

  ‘At eleven o’clock?’

  ‘Shortly afterwards then, yes. I wasn’t lying about the time.’

  At least about that, he says to himself.

  She cries quietly now, making no sound, her hands gripping the glass, the glass that he has filled for her and put in her hand before lighting a cigarette for himself. Her eyes are red, her face swollen. And her voice is a bit hoarse when she finds the strength to speak.

  ‘Do you think that Giulio… you think he took the money that night?’

  She looks like a child now, naming a fear to defeat it: ‘Tell me… is that what you think?’

  Cataldo is silent for a while. Then he says, ‘I think so.’

  A sudden painful grimace adds years to her face. ‘No, I don’t believe it. It’s not possible. If you’d met him, you wouldn’t believe it either… he wasn’t a bad man, really he wasn’t. There are some things a wife just knows…’

  In her heart, quite. In her heart she was sure. But what does a heart know of the complexity of a man? Of that mixture of love and iniquity that we all carry around inside? But he does not say this.

  ‘You loved him very much, didn’t you?’

  She does not need to answer, even an idiot would have known. But she does, ‘Love is what’s left when you take all the selfishness away. And I had a lot to give him.’

  He looks at her with understanding. He knows that is the way things are. Between a man and a woman there is a bit of all of this – love and selfishness, desire and tenderness, altruism and fidelity, and then esteem, jealousy, passion… but he also knows that Calabrese was right again: we do not control the duration of a love, or the duration of our lives.

  ‘Do you miss him so much? To the point of denying the evidence?’

  This time she does not reply. And so he gives her time, out of sympathy.

  ‘Perhaps you’re right. The death of a loved one always leaves a void.’

  ‘A void, yes,’ he reflects. ‘A void that can only be filled with memories and nostalgia. Because death is always mysterious.’

  That is it. He is about to leave, then he stops, his hand on the door handle.

  ‘There’s one more thing I have to ask you.’ He hesitates a moment. ‘It’s not pleasant.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Did your husband have a lover?’

  She lowers her head, without replying. Perhaps she is crying silently, like before. She sits like that for a long time. And now it does not matter if she says she does not know. Which is exactly what she does, without lifting her face.

  ‘I don’t know. Believe me, I don’t know.’ She coughs, then adds, ‘Perhaps he did, but it wasn’t important. What mattered was that he was here for me. That he dedicated time to being with me…’

  He nods and leaves, walks outside into the cool of an approaching storm that may break soon. He leans on the car door, thinking. The crossroads of lives that are tied together, lives that deceive one another, lose one another, find one another again, or not. Lives that succumb to the temptation to live, or to die. And the mystery that follows every love story. Because one life, one love is not enough to use up a person completely. But Miriam really did love her man, whatever he was. And perhaps she has not lost everything if she is left with the bitter privilege of shedding tears for him.

  Cataldo himself has lost more. A vision flashes through his mind, suddenly, as he gets into the car and waits. Perhaps it was the fresh air, or Miriam’s eyes that brought it back to him. That time at Ognina, in the autumn. Evening, the sea was grey with white flecks of small, breaking waves. The beach was far away, beyond the rocks, fading into an infinite blue. There was a great silence all around him and Tina, sitting close, watching the water. Suddenly they looked at each other and his breath came more quickly, his desire, intense, rose to his eyes and he wanted to hold her, but she had pulled away, a slight gesture, but an unequivocal one. ‘Why?’ he had asked, gently. There was no resentment, because it was simply that she could not fake love. That was the moment in which they told each other the truth. It was fatal… necessary. No one to blame. By then it was too late to change anything.

  That had been the last time. She had gone to the car while he sat there watching her disappear. From his life. Then night had fallen suddenly, the way darkness does on a winter’s day.

  He told himself sometimes that he had been unjust, selfish. That he had not really wanted her, that he had chosen not to do anything about it – he could have run after her, stopped her, he could have gone back to look for her. That is what he told himself. But then he thought that she had not really loved him enough, she had loved him less than she loved her parents, her habits, the life she led. And only later had he understood that no one can teach us what to do in the moment of farewell.

  Every time he thinks he has forgotten about it, it all comes back. Like now. Especially at sunset, in the silence, like the last time he saw her. While the white walls turn dirty with the shadows.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The arrest

  He waits a little longer before calling Muliere on his mobile.

  ‘Well? Everything set with Petronio?’

  ‘Yes, Inspector, no problem. He signed it straight away, I’ve got it with me. I didn’t even have to ask twice.’

  Just as well, he thinks – he knows that his deputy’s energy is inversely proportionate to his eloquence.

  From the receiver comes a faint hoarseness, the usual voice, ‘So… this evening then?’

  ‘Yes, but don’t worry, there’s no rush. Take your time and have something to eat. Let’s make it…’ and he raises his left wrist to look at his watch, ‘… say, in two hours’ time. At eleven. And bring someone with you… whoever’s available, as long as he’s on the ball.’

  ‘Three of us then. Okay.’

  ‘There shouldn’t be any trouble, but you never know…’

  He puts his mobile away and thinks for a while, his face marked by the lines that always appear when he is troubled. Then he returns to the car, gets in and looks out through the half-open window. Outside now, the air on the road carries the smell of the countryside, and the sky has turned a dark blue. But the wind is getting up and he shivers slightly.

  They find the pistol almost immediately in Marchisio’s hotel room, wrapped in a towel at the bottom of the wardrobe. Muliere is holding it now in a rather strange way – with a pencil through the trigger guard. ‘It’s been fired recently,’ he says, looking at it thoughtfu
lly. Then he turns to Marchisio and says, ‘Should’ve thrown it away.’

  Marchisio moves closer and he too looks at the Beretta, then he frowns and the shadows under his eyes darken. ‘It’s not mine,’ he says in the end, his voice hoarse.

  ‘Come on, Marchisio. You’re nailed now: pistol, motive, everything,’ says Muliere, more on edge than usual since he knelt down to look under the bed and got up with his face all red. ‘So… like to tell us all about it then?’

  ‘It’s not mine, I tell you! It’s the first time I’ve seen it.’

  ‘Things aren’t looking good for you. Don’t you understand?’ Cataldo says, less sharply. ‘Don’t you want to make a statement?’

  ‘You honestly think I used that?’

  ‘What I think doesn’t come into it. You well know it’s all up to the investigating judges, the prosecutors, defence lawyers, experts and so on… so?’

  He seems confused as he looks first at Muliere, then at Cataldo, and he lifts a hand to his mouth.

  ‘Was it you, then?’

  His mouth is shut tight. His eyes are closed. He shakes his head several times, slowly. Then he opens his eyes and turns to Cataldo, who asked the question.

  ‘No, no. I’ve never seen it before…’ But his voice is cracking.

  Cataldo shakes his head. ‘It’s pointless, carrying on like this. Denying the evidence.’ And then, almost under his breath, he says to Muliere, ‘To tell you the truth, I really didn’t imagine we’d find it here.’

  Marchisio grabs at these words: ‘But it’s the truth. That pistol isn’t mine, how many times do I have to tell you!’

  ‘So how come it was in your wardrobe? Eh?’

  ‘I’m innocent, I didn’t fire it, I didn’t kill anyone…’ He has blurted all this out in one breath, his face red, then he swallows and adds, ‘It’s just like back then, eighteen years ago…’

  ‘Answer the bloody question!’

  Cataldo has raised his voice for a moment and it is full of pain and rage.

  ‘Someone planted it…’ Marchisio says, swallowing before he continues, ‘Someone wants to set me up…’

  ‘Just like back then… we understand,’ says Muliere. ‘We’ll take him in now, won’t we?’

  ‘Straight away, yes. To Petronio.’

  ‘You’d best get dressed,’ says the third policeman, silent up till now.

  While Marchisio gets changed, in silence now, Cataldo opens the windows and looks out. Under the porticoes, people are walking, chatting, but no one looks up towards them and through another open window in the hotel he can hear a television.

  He turns back around and everything is ready. The Beretta is in a plastic bag, Marchisio is dressed, not wearing handcuffs, standing there between Muliere and the other officer. He starts proclaiming his innocence again, blurting it out now and then in the same words and Cataldo gives him one last look as they lead him away. He suddenly notices a purplish mark on Marchisio’s right cheek, as though he had caught a chill from a cold wind, and the dark circles of sweat in the armpits of his cream-coloured shirt. He feels almost sorry for him.

  They go out of the hotel into a moonless night. The sky is dark, flecked with grey clouds. And the cool air still carries the smell of damp soil.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The photograph

  The shutters in his bedroom are closed, but the windows are open. The air still carries the smell of soil, just like in the countryside after a storm. But there has been no storm yet.

  Cataldo cannot get to sleep. And it is not because of the cool air, the damp. It is because now and then some sediment of unease, of painful embarrassment resurfaces. That is when he scratches his nose, thoughtfully, with his thumb and his index finger.

  Marchisio is inside. No alibi, no defence, caught with the pistol almost in his hand. So? It is all over, isn’t it? So why is he still looking for something?

  There is a black void inside him – deep and sad. He has no desire to switch on the television, to seek a distraction. The flickering bluish light, at moments like this, just seems to underline his solitude, his melancholy. Because there are moments, in a case, that bring with them a feeling of uselessness, of inefficiency – when there is a sense of bitterness, of worry that rises and that then in the end you manage to chase away. Sometimes a memory is enough to save you, to save someone else. To pull you out of the storm.

  And it is a memory, yes… it is a detail. Something important that had struck him, but now he cannot bring it into focus… or is it just an impression, is he the one who is making a mistake? Or is it time? Perhaps it is time itself that is changing, making him so unsettled, so reluctant to accept the end?

  Or is it something else? Something that is moving in the depths of his memory, something living that demands to surface, to be seen by everyone. If only he could help it along. Zoboli, Zanetti, Marchisio, and then the pistol… has this story not ended a bit too neatly? Don’t the pieces fit together into a shape that is just too obvious? And that photograph?

  He throws the sheet off the bed. He sighs. Then he starts thinking again, his ears soaking up the silence, his back resting on the pillow, leaning on the headboard. He insists on remembering, on sifting out of these past days’ work all the objects, the words, all the things that are clinging to his patience. Because he knows, he knows very well, that perception is guided by expectations and that we always see, even if we would rather not, what we expect to see, what we believe in. But instead he has to remember and nothing more, without exerting any influence from his own logic, or his own imagination. All this even though there is the way things happen, and the way we remember them.

  But it is difficult now. It would almost be better to get up, to do something. He picks up a book and goes into the kitchen to smoke. Or maybe to put on a tape of Franco Battiato’s songs, the one with Gli Uccelli, which always calms him down, and leads him to lose himself in the emotive crescendo of its melody. But there would not be any point, it would not cure his unease. So it is best to go and wait in bed. To think.

  Then, slowly, all the hints begin to condense into precise images. And even he does not know exactly when, he will never know, but in the end it comes back to him – clear, correct, that something, the string that when pulled unravels all his thoughts. So he smiles to himself in the half-light, switches off the bedside lamp and lies down, satisfied, while outside it sounds as though it is beginning to rain. He is at peace now, there is no hurry. He will go tomorrow to check it out. And the rain will be good for the land, after all that heat.

  He opens the window and looks out. The light is bluish, there is a dirty grey colour hanging over the roads and the sky, clinging to the houses. He has never had so much to do on a Saturday morning. He makes the first phone call still in his underpants.

  ‘Good morning, Inspector… the results? Of course… they said they’d be ready by nine.’

  ‘Do you know if they’ve actually worked on it?’

  ‘Oh yes… last night. Urgent… Petronio told them.’

  ‘Good. I’m on my way.’

  It is drizzling over Guiglia and the sky is like a dirty sheet. He has gone to the bathroom to wash his face and now his eyes feel prickly. And he feels it immediately, like a premonition, that subtle unhappiness that waking up leaves in one’s mouth.

  It is raining harder now, out on the road. There is almost no one around – a few open umbrellas, silence in the car. The dull rhythm of the water on the bodywork, the rumble of an engine now and then, and the spray from the wheels. And out of town the horizon is a combination of the grey of the tarmac and the grey of the sky.

  Quarter past nine, his third coffee. From the machine in the corridor.

  ‘The post-mortem results are in. And the forensic report.’

  The voice behind him takes him by surprise. Even though he knows who it is.

  ‘I’ve put everything on your desk.’

  ‘Haven’t you had a look?’

  ‘Yes, of course.
You know…’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Just as we imagined.’

  Muliere’s face is relaxed, Cataldo knows him well. He is always like this at the end of a case.

  They go into the office together. Cataldo points to the papers.

  ‘Have they already been sent to Petronio?’

  The other man raises his arms, a bit pathetically: ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Let’s see…’

  He sits down and starts reading quietly. Everything fits. The two bullets that killed Zanetti were shot by the same Beretta that killed Zoboli, and the weapon is the one found in Marchisio’s room.

  ‘Crystal clear, isn’t it?’

  ‘No.’

  The Inspector’s frown wipes the contented smile from his deputy’s face.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Read this.’

  Muliere, opposite him, plants his elbows on the table and cranes his neck.

  ‘Down here. No fingerprints on Marchisio’s pistol. Nothing.’

  Outside, the heavy rain has stopped, now it is just a diffuse whisper.

  By the time they get in the car, the rain has stopped altogether; there is a poster hanging from the wall of the town hall. Cataldo notices it as he drives past, pulling up to park on the hill, just before that narrow lane from where it is difficult to see the heavens. Everything is just like the day before. The buzz of the intercom, the click of the door, the smell of mould. And he is there on the second floor, standing in front of the open door.

  ‘Are you looking for me?’

  ‘Yes. For the last time.’ And since he does not move, Cataldo adds, ‘Didn’t I tell you I’d be back?’

  ‘Yes, perhaps you did.’ He moves, finally, to let him in. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’ The professor is pale, he looks exhausted, but he says, ‘So you’ve cracked it?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  He stops suddenly, in the entrance.

  ‘But Marchisio…’

  ‘We’ve arrested him. But you know that too.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So what do I want here? Is that what you’re asking?’