The Cross of Lazzaro

by John Harris

  It lay there, like some great dramatic symbol, the light glaring down on it; and to Henry, too, it seemed to have been the beginning of everything; and suddenly, in spite of its meaning and. all that it stood for, it looked strangely evil in its starkness. Until its arrival the Val Caloroso had lain silently below the Catena di Saga, not much touched by tourism, not even much touched by the political strife further to the north, in spite of the odd explosion that had stopped an occasional train to Venice from Bolzano. But since it had appeared so dramatically everything seemed to have boiled up into a harsh conflict full of bitterness and emotion in which Henry was involved, too, because he was linked securely to the fringe of it by the dam.

  He sat for a long time in silence, his eyes on the flash of red and black and gold, trying to sort out his thoughts, knowing that none of it was really his affair, yet oppressed suddenly with a feeling of responsibility he’d been trying all the time to avoid. When he went outside again the rain had started once more, and the police had dispersed the crowds outside the Stöckli Bar. He got back to the Stettnerhof almost at the same time as Caporelli. The Italian’s face was grim and devoid of anger as if it had been carved out of the wood that lined the hall.

  ‘He’s gone,’ he said. ‘His room had been stripped bare. I forced the door. There were things all over the place. As though he’d slipped in and grabbed some clothes in a hurry and vanished.’

  ‘Then he must have been involved somehow.’

  Caporelli nodded. ‘He is “Hofer”,’ he said.

  ‘How do you know? How can you be sure?’

  Caporelli put his hand on his heart. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Not from evidence on paper. Only here. I know now that all the time he must have been “Hofer”.’

  ‘But I thought he only belonged to the Volkspartei for the fun he got out of it.’

  Caporelli turned slowly. ‘Then why did he leave?’ he said. ‘Because Dittli must have told him what I knew. He wasn’t taking any chances. The game was up.’ He sighed. ‘It was a good disguise, wasn’t it?’ he said. ‘He was always so honest. Big, hearty Alois, everybody’s friend. Nobody minded his politics. “Sure, I’m a member of the Volkspartei. But I help the police all I can because I don’t really believe in it. I’m only a member because the boys admire me and I can get some of the girls into bed. I’m not dangerous. I don’t throw bombs. I’ve even got friends among the police.”’

  Henry remembered the two policemen who had met them up the mountain, chaffing Stettner and pulling his leg about his customer, and realized just how good a disguise his honest attitude had been.

  ‘That’s what I thought, too, Aynree,’ Caporelli went on. ‘I was wrong. And so were the police.’

  ‘Where will he have gone?’

  Caporelli shrugged. ‘Into the mountains Where he’s safe. You could lose an army in the Catena di Saga. I could find him, but it would take months of searching. The police never will, because they don’t know the mountains.’

  ‘Where will he head for?’

  Caporelli shrugged again. ‘Perhaps over the border to Austria. He’ll be safe there. Perhaps he’ll stay in the mountains. Perhaps there’ll be more explosions.’

  He was silent for a while, then he went on, speaking slowly as though he were tired. ‘I went into all the bars,’ he said. ‘I went to all his friends and to all the women I knew of. I even went up to Oswino’s by the dam. He wasn’t there. He’s gone. He knows I will come.

  ‘I don’t understand why I never thought of it before,’ he continued in a bewildered voice. ‘These boys, these students, they weren’t old enough to be leaders. It had to be someone with army experience, someone who knew the town. Who else could it have been but Alois? They admired him. He was a good guy. He was the best climber in the district and the best guide – or he had been. He could skin-dive better than anyone, he had more stories than the Arabian Nights. He could drink and had a way with women. There was everything in him that a foolish boy could want. Of course he was “Hofer”. I was a madman not to realize.’

  He struck his forehead with the heel of his hand. ‘But I shall find him,’ he said. ‘He’ll come back. Perhaps to see Oswino’s wife. They’ve been too close for too long. If not now, then next year or the year afterwards. At the end of the season I shall go to Bolzano and Trento and Trepizano and ask after him among the students. They’ll know where he is or where someone is who knows where he is, and sooner or later someone will feel he must tell me. I shall find him, even if I have to go all the way to Vienna for him.’

  He paused. ‘The police have set up an office in the basement of the Municipio. They’re already rounding up the students. Castelrossi tells me it’s the same in Trepizano. The trains will stop again and the boats will not run. The lake will come to a standstill.’

  They were still standing there talking in low tones when the door opened and Maggie appeared. She had a heavy canvas bag in her hand which she put on the floor. She seemed to be in a daze, her eyes blank and shocked still.

  Caporelli seemed to realize at once that something was wrong. He went to the bar and Henry heard him asking for a brandy. He returned with it as Henry was helping her off with her coat. She hadn’t said a word yet, and as they made her sit down on the divan in the hall, she looked up at Henry, her eyes wide and full of tears.

  ‘Maggie,’ he asked. ‘What’s the matter? What’s happened?’

  ‘It’s Sister Ursula,’ she said. ‘She was at the police station returning the cross that Giovanni stole. They told me at the orphanage. They’d just heard. She was the one you saw outside the door.’

  Caporelli’s eyes flew to Henry’s and a spasm of agony crossed his face, then Henry remembered seeing the flattened figure in black with the parcel against the wall of the Questura. Sister Ursula! That calm, intelligent, clear-minded woman! She must have been on the point of going through the door when the explosion had occurred.

  For a long time none of them spoke, then Caporelli’s throat worked, and his words came out jaggedly.

  ‘I thought a great deal of Sister Ursula,’ he said slowly, and Henry could see the guilt for her death written clearly on his face. ‘I often did things for her children. She always came to me for help. It was Sister Ursula who told me about the dam.’

  It was impossible to say anything that would help him.

  ‘What about the children?’ Henry asked quietly.

  Maggie lifted her eyes. ‘They don’t know yet,’ she said. ‘Only Giovanni. He knows. They had to tell him because he kept asking if she’d taken the cross back.’

  ‘How is he?’

  She made a movement with her shoulders, not a shrug, but as though she couldn’t bear to think of it and was brushing it aside, then her brows came down and she stood up abruptly and reached for the heavy bag she’d brought with her.

  ‘I’ve brought you this,’ she said. ‘I’ve been down to fetch it. Nobody will ever notice. Not now. I didn’t bring much.’

  ‘What is it?’ Caporelli asked.

  She ignored the question and went on in a flat voice as though she were delivering a lecture. ‘I hate the thought of Arcuneum,’ she said. ‘After this, I couldn’t bear to have any more to do with it. I shall be going home as soon as possible.’

  ‘Maggie–’

  She shook her head as Henry spoke, as though trying to will him to silence.

  ‘I want you to use it,’ she said. ‘I want you to do what you wanted to do. There’s been enough unhappiness here since Lazzaro’s cross appeared. God forbid there should be any more.’

  Caporelli stared at her and then at Henry, then he crossed quickly to the bag and lifted it to the divan alongside her, feeling its weight in his hand as he did so. His fingers were trembling as he opened it, then he glanced inside and quickly closed it again.

  His face had gone white as he stared at Henry.

  ‘Plastic,’ he said. ‘Enough to blow the gate out of the stopper wall.’

  Fourteen

&nbs
p; For a long time Caporelli stared at Henry, then he nodded towards his office. Henry took Maggie’s arm and led her after him, still apparently dazed, as he carried the bag inside.

  Caporelli locked the door and drew the curtains, then he opened the bag again and examined the contents more closely.

  ‘Pentolite,’ he said, as though he were reading from an inventory. ‘In two-hundred-and-fifty-gram packages. Eight of them. Lead azide detonators. Madonna, you could have blown your hand off! Wire. Everything we need.’

  He looked at Maggie for a second and she stared back at him silently, her eyes wide.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ he asked.

  She sat down abruptly in the chair opposite the desk. ‘It’s out of the old Customs House,’ she said. ‘We had to take the key every night to the police. You know about that. They insisted on it. It was my job. I had to sign for it. I never got there tonight. Nobody will miss it now. I expect everything was destroyed and nobody will think of it.’

  ‘They’ll be looking for it tomorrow,’ Caporelli said.

  ‘No.’ Maggie shook her head calmly, as though she’d thought of everything. ‘Nobody knows about it. There was no one there. Not even the policeman who stands guard every night. They’d been down for him to go up to the Questura.’ She paused. ‘I suppose he’s needed more up there just now.’

  She indicated the bag on the floor. ‘They’ll never miss it,’ she said again. ‘I only brought a little. There’s so much in there, with the crates and the shavings and all the things we brought up from the lake, they’ll never notice it – not for a long time.’

  ‘What are we going to do with it?’

  Henry stared at Caporelli for a second, suddenly caught by the wild impulse to suggest using it themselves on the dam, then common sense caught hold of him again. ‘Take it back,’ he said. ‘Take it back straight away.’

  ‘No!’ Maggie spoke explosively. ‘No! It was Dei Monti’s fault! If he hadn’t insisted on moving everything the cross wouldn’t have been stolen and Sister Ursula wouldn’t have been at the Questura!’

  ‘Maggie,’ Henry said. ‘If Lazzaro hadn’t been drowned, none of it would have happened because that cross in the church would never have appeared and then this cross would never have been found. You might just as well blame it on Lazzaro.’

  She wouldn’t listen and kept on shaking her head.

  ‘No,’ she kept saying. ‘No. This is what I want.’

  Caporelli spoke quietly. ‘We can’t take it back now,’ he pointed out to Henry. ‘Not now. Not after what’s happened at the Questura. We can’t risk it. They’d never believe she’d just taken it on an impulse. They’ll still be too angry. They’ll think she’s had it all the time. They’ll even think this is where the bomb came from, when’ – he paused and his throat worked – ‘when it didn’t, of course.’

  ‘Then, for God’s sake, dump it,’ Henry said. ‘In the lake. Anywhere. Listen, Ettore, I know what you think of me but I’m not just trying to keep my hands clean. It’s a question of sheer sense.’

  Caporelli nodded. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I never thought otherwise. I quite agree.’ He placed the bag in the open safe behind his desk and locked the door and pocketed the key. Then he turned and nodded.

  ‘Leave it where it is,’ he said. ‘It’s safe there. I’ll get rid of it as soon as possible.’ He nodded to Maggie. ‘You’d better persuade her to go to bed,’ he said. ‘She’s suffering from shock, I suspect. Get her away from Cadivescovo as soon as you can.’

  Henry nodded and took Maggie’s arm. She rose without a word and allowed him to lead her out of the office. Several of Dei Monti’s archaeological group were just arriving as they left, but, although they glanced curiously at her, none of them spoke. Henry took her to her room and switched on the light.

  ‘I want to go home,’ she said abruptly. ‘I’m going to pack.’

  She refused to go to bed and Henry left while she placed a suitcase on the bed and began to throw things into it, untidily, as though she didn’t even see what she did.

  Caporelli was still in his office when Henry reached the hall. ‘She’ll not be allowed to go yet, of course,’ he said. ‘Not now. Not for a few days. There isn’t a chance. The police were arriving from Trepizano when I came back. It’ll be like getting through the eye of a needle. There’s only one way out of Cadivescovo and that’s over the mountains. The way he went.’

  He looked up at Henry, his face concerned. ‘They’ll guess,’ be said. ‘They’ll find out he’s gone before long and they’ll guess he had something to do with it. Then they’ll want to see her. They’re bound to want to talk to her because she was always with him. At least’ – he managed a twisted smile – ‘until you came, she was.’

  The town seemed sullen and angry the following morning. There were swarms of police about the place, and soldiers with steel helmets and machine guns, even a couple of light armoured cars standing in the Piazza della Citta where builders were shoring up the front of the burned-out Questura. The boats had stopped. The Via Colleno was sealed off. The town had become a prison.

  The rain had started again and was coming in flurries down the valley and along the lake, shutting out the view of Trepizano, and giving the town an eerie, flattened old-photograph look that added to the oppressive feeling of gloom. Only a few disconsolate tourists seemed to be moving about, haunting the Municipio and the boat-station in the hope of getting permission to leave.

  The next day, with the town still patrolled by soldiers and everybody moving about silently, close to the walls as though they were full of guilt, the rain began to come down harder, so that the police and soldiers searched for doorways, standing out of the downpour with their guns sheltered by their rubber capes, their faces heavy with anger. The town seemed dead. Most of the tourists were either in their hotels now, or in the bars, keeping out of the way, and still no boat had arrived from Trepizano.

  Caporelli was watching the weather with a strained look on his face. He was bearing a heavy load of responsibility.

  By the third morning the town seemed to have lost its power of speech. The police seemed to fill the streets, huddling against the rain, and the damp air seemed to be noisy with the wail of sirens as the police cars brought people to the Municipio for questioning. It was almost as though Cadivescovo had been occupied by a foreign power.

  In the afternoon, however, in spite of the police, a few people began to make their way towards the Piazza della Citta. At first there were objections and a few muttered arguments, but the groups of people still kept pushing forward, not saying much, just moving forward all the time. In the end the barriers were pulled back a little and they were allowed to pass, watched carefully all the time by the uniformed men. By the time Caporelli and Henry arrived with Maggie, the Piazza della Citta had filled with silent watchers.

  There were no arguments, however, and the people had lined the walls quietly, making no attempt to stand on the steps of the Hoferdenkmal or the War Memorial. Many of them were in black and most of them had crepe-covered buttons on their lapels. It was as though they felt a sense of collective guilt and needed to show their sorrow. They waited silently, impervious to the rain and indifferent to the groups of policemen who stood at every alley-end.

  Father Anselmo was the first to appear at the head of the funeral procession, followed by Father Gianpiero and the acolytes bearing the incense. Then came the three hearses, all drawn by black horses with nodding plumes, two of the coffins draped with red, white and green flags.

  The hearses were followed by a long line of black-garbed men with enormous wreaths of mountain flowers, and women who wailed and wept as they splashed through the puddles. Behind them there were a group of children from the Orphanage of St Francis, scrubbed to the bone and painfully clean in their stiff, threadbare clothes. Giovanni was among them, pale and strained-looking, and two or three nuns, Sister Agata weeping unrestrainedly. Finally there were a few grim-faced police officials and the Ma
yor. The number of policemen taking part was small because most of them were standing in the arcades or sitting in the lorries parked about the square waiting for the trouble that everyone knew was coming.

  But still nothing happened and the procession passed through the silent crowd without difficulty, bowed against the rain. As it vanished into the church and the high sound of boys’ voices began, there was a long low sound like a sigh from the watching crowd, then the mass of people began to crumble as it edged after the procession into the church. First one turned away after the silent file of black figures, and then another, until the piazza was filled with slow-moving, muttering groups.

  Then, as he moved away with Maggie, Henry was startled to see another procession coming out of one of the side streets near the boat-station. It marched silently, almost as though mocking the slow movement of Father Anselmo, and some of the young men who formed it wore the black flowered waistcoats and knee-breeches of the mountains. All of them had red and white rosettes in their buttonholes and were pale and defiant-looking, as though they were trying hard to muster their courage.

  ‘Oh Madonna, no,’ Caporelli breathed.

  They were students, more stupid than brave, marching to the statue of Andreas Hofer with a wreath draped in red and white ribbon. There were two large photographs attached to it and Henry guessed at once that they were the pictures of the two students who had died in Trepizano, one of them choked to death by his own bed sheets in the jail, the other in the hospital from the injuries he’d received in the struggle with Sergeant Guidotti on the railway.

  ‘Mamma mia,’ Caporelli said. ‘They must be mad!’

  The dispersing crowd had stopped dead and turned, and Henry took hold of Maggie’s arm and began to push her away. She was watching with fascinated horror, her eyes wide, her mouth twisted in anger and disgust.

  The procession continued to move forward, a splash of colour in the sombre square, and among the pale nervous faces of the boys there were a few that were blank and stupid with idealism, and among the flickering anxious eyes some that were blind with pride and arrogance.