by Marco Vichi
Bordelli drove Botta back to his basement flat in Via del Campuccio then quickly dashed home to change clothes. It was already half past ten. After a long hot shower he began to get dressed, in no hurry. In his mind he could still see the dark tree trunks, the wisps of fog, the wild boar … but his thoughts were elsewhere. For the umpteenth time he reviewed in his head the reports of the disappearance of Giacomo Pellissari, in the absurd hope that he might finally discover a detail that would give him a lead to follow.
The boy had vanished the previous Wednesday, after coming out of his grammar school, the Collegio alla Quercia, in a torrential downpour. His father had taken him there at 8.25 that morning, as always. Normally when the school day ended, one of his parents was always there to pick him up. But that day, when his mother had gone down to the garage to get her Fiat 600, the car wouldn’t start. She rang her husband at the office, and he’d got in his car immediately and headed for the Collegio. But he arrived more than an hour late, owing to an accident on the Viali caused by the downpour. Protecting himself with an umbrella, he’d gone into the school’s entrance hall, expecting to find his son waiting there for him, but there was no sign of Giacomo. The school caretaker threw up his hands. He said the boy had waited for him until well past one o’clock and had even phoned home, but the line was always busy … In the end he’d left, running out into the rain, and there was no stopping him.
Bordelli lit a cigarette, again reviewing the matter down to the small details. By this point it was like watching a film. He was quite familiar with the area between the Collegio alla Quercia and the Pellissaris’ villa in Via di Barbacane. In fact he’d grown up in that very neighbourhood.
Barrister Pellissari had asked the custodian if he could phone his wife, but he, too, had found the line always engaged. And so he got back in his car and drove slowly along the route home: Via della Piazzuola, Viale Volta, Via di Barbacane. Giacomo wasn’t at home. His wife was worried, but not terribly so. Perhaps Giacomo had ducked into a doorway to get out of the rain …
The barrister had gone over to the telephone in the hall and found the phone slightly off the hook. He upbraided his wife, and she began to get anxious. Pellissari went out again in his Alfa Romeo and combed the streets of the neighbourhood. He went up and down Via Aldini, a small, deserted street connecting Viale Volta and Via di Barbacane, several times. Giacomo knew the street well. It was just round the corner from home, and he liked to bicycle there with his friends …
At three o’clock the barrister had finally decided to call the police. Two patrolmen had gone to the Collegio alla Quercia to speak with the custodian, Oreste, a small man with very little hair and pink cheeks, who blanched upon hearing the news. They asked him to recount the sequence of events, and Oreste was very precise. After the usual chaos when school let out, he’d gone into the street to look at the rain. He’d found the boy in the doorway with his satchel between his feet, gazing anxiously out at Via della Piazzuola. He asked him whether he wanted to call his mother. Giacomo said yes and followed the caretaker to the porter’s desk. He dialled his home number several times, but the line was always engaged. He seemed afraid, and Oreste had tried to reassure him. Somebody’d be along soon to pick him up, he’d said to him, there was no need to worry, it was obviously because of the rain. The boy went out again to look down the street, with Oreste following behind him. And then, less than a minute later, Giacomo had run out into the rain, coat over his head, satchel bouncing on his back. Oreste shouted to him to wait, saying that he would walk him home himself, but the child didn’t listen and kept on running. The caretaker had tried dialling Giacomo’s parents’ phone number again, but the line was still busy. In the end he’d decided there was nothing to worry about, and he stopped thinking about it.
A squad of policemen had questioned the inhabitants of all the buildings and houses along the road that went from the Collegio to the Pelissaris’ villa, including Via Aldini. Only an old woman had seen from her window a young boy walking hurriedly in the rain at the corner of Viale Volta and Via della Piazzuola, around quarter past one. The clothes, the colour of the satchel, and the time left no room for doubt. The boy was Giacomo Pellissari. The old woman had been the last person to see him, and her testimony eliminated any shadow of a doubt as to the caretaker’s sincerity. Nothing else had come out since, but that was to be expected. When Giacomo had left the school, it was lunchtime and raining cats and dogs, and everyone else was minding his own business.
Photos of the boy had appeared in all the newspapers and been broadcast on the national news and that of Channel 2, but nobody had come forward as yet. How can a boy disappear into thin air?
When he parked the car in the station’s courtyard it was past 10.30. Mugnai popped out of the guardhouse and came up to him, looking as if his dog had just died.
‘Good morning, Inspector.’
‘Hello, Mugnai … Why so cheerful?’
‘The commissioner’s got a stick up his arse, if you’ll pardon my language.’
‘That’s nothing new,’ said Bordelli.
‘It’s not my fault the kid hasn’t turned up! He treated me like a blockhead.’ He was very offended.
‘Don’t take it so hard, Mugnai,’ said Bordelli.
‘The boss said he wants to see you at once.’
‘Fuckin’ hell …’ The inspector sighed.
‘Prepare yourself. He’s really pissed off today.’
‘Too bad for him. Find Piras for me, would you? And tell him to come to my office.’
He gestured goodbye to Mugnai and started up the stairs. He went up to the second floor with a cigarette in his mouth, promising himself he wouldn’t smoke it before noon. He knocked on Inzipone’s door and went in without waiting. The moment he saw him, the commissioner jumped to his feet, but certainly not out of politeness. His eyes looked like burnt chestnuts.
‘You must find that child, Inspector!’ he shouted, shaking his hands in the air.
‘I want to more than anyone else, sir,’ Bordelli said calmly.
‘Then what’s taking you so long? Have you read the papers? POLICE POWERLESS! LAW ENFORCEMENT ASLEEP!’ He came towards Bordelli, waving La Nazione in the air.
‘We’re doing everything we can.’
‘I’m not interested in your excuses! Get on with it, dammit!’
‘He vanished into thin air,’ said Bordelli, with a strong desire to light the cigarette between his fingers.
‘Nobody vanishes into thin air,’ said Inzipone. He tossed the newspaper aside and went and sat back down at his desk. Bordelli drew closer, still standing.
‘We’ll find him,’ he said, more to himself than to the commissioner.
‘I certainly hope so, Inspector, for your sake. I got a call this morning from the Deputy Minister of Transport. Barrister Pellissari is a very dear friend of his.’
‘Ah, I didn’t know. That changes everything. You’ll see, we’ll find the boy before the day is over.’
‘Drop the sarcasm, Inspector,’ said the commissioner, raising his chin with an air of menace. Bordelli put the cigarette in his mouth and lit it, before the commissioner’s goggling eyes.
‘Then I’ll be clearer. I don’t give a damn whose son he is.’
‘And you think I do?’ said Inzipone, furious at Bordelli’s insolence.
‘I can never speak for others, sir,’ said the inspector, taking his leave with a slight nod and heading for the door. He heard the commissioner stand up again, making the legs of his armchair squeak.
‘I don’t like your way of doing things one bit, Inspector.’
‘I am truly sorry,’ Bordelli said without turning around.
‘And you know I’m not the only who feels this way.’
‘My respects, sir.’
‘There must be a reason you’re still an inspector at your age …’ the commissioner muttered between clenched teeth, but Bordelli heard him just the same. He went out, closing the door behind him. He wished he was sti
ll up in the foggy hills with Botta, looking for porcini mushrooms through the rotting leaves. He went into his office and found Piras there waiting for him, sitting in front of the desk.
‘At ease …’ he said, but the young Sardinian had already shot to his feet. He still limped a little from the bullets that had shattered one of his legs a year before. He was barely twenty-two years old, but his considerable skills had convinced Bordelli to keep him by his side in every investigation. On top of this he was the son of Gavino Piras, a comrade of Bordelli’s from the war, which made him even dearer to the inspector. Gavino had returned from the fighting minus an arm, but hadn’t stopped living a farmer’s life. But, all things considered, even he had been damned lucky … Bordelli still remembered the time Gavino had taken a grenade square in the chest, but it hadn’t exploded. It just bounced off his uniform and fell at his feet like a rock … In the heat of the moment the German had forgotten to pull the ring, and Gavino cut him down with a single burst of fire. After the skirmish, he’d approached Bordelli.
‘Even grenades are afraid of Sardinians, Captain,’ he’d whispered, wild-eyed. He was well aware he’d been saved by a miracle …
‘You wanted to see me, Inspector?’ asked young Piras.
‘Yes, I wanted to share my ball-aches with you.’
‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’
‘Unfortunately, yes.’
Without actually admitting it, they were now both convinced the boy was dead. No ransom demands, no anonymous telephone calls.
‘Let’s hope we’re wrong, sir,’ said Piras, who had sat back down in the meantime.
Bordelli went over to the window and looked outside. It was starting to rain again, for a change. The respite had lasted only two days.
‘What should we do, Piras? Reread the reports? Eat them? Go and play a game of bocce? What the hell should we do?’
‘If I can speak sincerely …’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Our only hope is to find the body.’
‘Bloody rain,’ Bordelli whispered, watching the large drops splatter on the asphalt. Dejected, he lit a cigarette. A receiver off the hook, buckets of rain, Signora Pellissari’s Fiat that wouldn’t start … A series of unlucky coincidences? Was it a premeditated kidnapping, or had chance stuck her grubby paws in this?
The internal phone line rang. It was the radio room. A car with two corpses inside it had been found a few hundred yards from the monastery of Montesenario. A man and a woman. At first glance it looked like a double suicide.
‘All right, I’m on my way … Inform Diotivede and the assistant prosecutor,’ Bordelli said calmly before hanging up.
‘What is it?’ Piras was already standing.
‘I’ll tell you in the stairwell,’ the inspector muttered, taking a deep drag on his cigarette. He was doing his best not to smoke, but between women and corpses, it wasn’t easy.
‘Slow down, Inspector,’ said Piras, limping.
‘Sorry, I always forget.’
He slowed to the young man’s pace and they went down into the courtyard. It was deluging. Mugnai saw them and came running out with a large green country umbrella that covered all three of them. While walking them to the Beetle, he asked what seven-letter word might describe the Hill ever dear to Leopardi.
‘Forlorn,’ Piras and Bordelli said in chorus. They got into the car and left, leaving Mugnai behind to his thoughts.
As they drove through Piazza delle Cure the rain let up a little, but the sky was still black. The inspector was thinking that it was a relief to deal with something concrete, even if it meant two dead.
Half an hour later they were at Montesenario. There was a pair of patrol cars there, as well as a few onlookers. It was still drizzling with a monotonous persistence that tried even the most steadfast patience. Bordelli approached the Fiat 600 and looked inside. A man of about forty with a hole in his left temple and a woman of about thirty with her hand on her bloodstained lap, both with their mouths half open. The back seat was stacked high with fabric catalogues.
‘Keep those people away,’ Bordelli said to one of the uniformed cops. He tried opening the door on the driver’s side. It was unlocked. He stuck his head inside to have a close look at the corpses and bullet holes. The woman had been shot in the belly. Unlike hers, the man’s eyes were wide open. He searched the man’s jacket and the woman’s handbag for their papers, then stepped aside to let Piras have a look. He was almost convinced he knew how things had unfolded, and wanted to see whether the Sardinian agreed. He waited patiently for Piras to finish.
‘What do you think?’ he asked him.
‘It wasn’t premeditated,’ said the young man.
‘Go on …’
‘Two illicit lovers. They had a quarrel, he threatened her with the pistol, she perhaps made fun of him, saying the pistol wasn’t loaded, and so he pulls back the slide and lets it go, not knowing that would make the gun go off. Seeing that he’s killed her by accident, he loses his head and shoots himself.’
‘Makes perfect sense to me,’ said Bordelli, handing him the two poor souls’ papers. The man was married, the woman too, but not to each other.
At that moment the Fiat 1100 of Dr Diotivede pulled up, as black and shiny as a politician’s shoe. The old police pathologist got out with his medical bag in hand, also black, naturally. His snow-white hair gleamed in the morning light. As he approached the two lovers’ car, he gave an almost imperceptible nod of greeting. He always wore a childlike frown on his face, as if he’d just been woken up to go to school. Opening his bag, he stuck his hands inside and then withdrew them already sheathed in rubber gloves. He ducked into the car to touch the corpses. Less than a minute later he peeled off his gloves.
‘The woman died two hours later than the man, maybe even two and a half,’ he said, jotting his first notes down in his notebook.
‘Are you sure about that?’ asked Bordelli.
‘No, I was just kidding,’ Diotivede grumbled, still writing.
‘It wasn’t really a question …’
‘I have to go now, I have a rendezvous with an old lady,’ the doctor said, putting his notebook away.
‘Dead or alive?’
‘What difference does it make?’ said Diotivede, smiling, and he started walking towards his car, bag swaying at his side. A child with white hair, thought Bordelli, also smiling. The doctor swung the car around and headed down the hill.
Piras and Bordelli followed him moments later, descending in silence along the tortuous Montesenario road. There was no mystery to the tragedy, no secrets to uncover. There was no point in waiting for the assistant prosecutor. Prosecutor Cangiani wasn’t the most pleasant person in the world.
And so the inspector found himself wrestling with the case of the missing boy again, and it was clear that Piras was thinking of the same thing. It had become a sort of obsession for both. It was the first time Bordelli had found himself in this situation, and he was having trouble swallowing it. When they got to Piazza delle Cure, Piras shook his head.
‘Shit, Inspector …’
‘What is it, Piras?’
‘I just can’t stand sitting here twiddling my thumbs like this.’
‘What else can we do?’ said Bordelli, lighting a cigarette. Piras rolled down his window and stuck his head outside, as though afraid he might suffocate. He found cigarettes disgusting and couldn’t understand how an intelligent person could waste time smoking them. A cold wind blew in, insinuating itself under their clothing.
‘I can throw it away, if you like,’ the inspector said.
‘And I can go on foot, if you prefer,’ Piras said provocatively.
Bordelli took two or three drags in a row and threw out the cigarette, and Piras finally closed the window. After a minute of very Sardinian silence, he said that when he was about ten years old, a little girl had been murdered in his town. Raped and strangled. In all the towns around nobody talked about anything else. It took them several m
onths to find the killer, and it was only by chance. One day, during mass in a nearby town, a little yellow ribbon happened to fall out of the priest’s pocket. A woman who knew the young girl’s family was almost certain she recognised the ribbon, and to be sure she went to the carabinieri after the mass. The little girl had worn her hair in a ponytail, and her mother would always make a bow with a yellow ribbon just like that one. The priest was questioned. At first he pretended to be taken aback, but he was visibly nervous. In the end he confessed. After one hour in jail he hanged himself from the bars of his cell with a sort of rope fashioned from shreds of his shirt …
‘It’s always nice to hear such cheerful stories,’ Bordelli said, smiling bitterly.
‘Well, at least they found the killer …’
‘Not so fast, Piras. Nobody’s said the boy was killed yet,’ said the inspector, thinking the exact opposite.
‘Thirteen-year-olds don’t usually elope,’ Piras muttered.
‘Let’s just wait … You never know.’
They were back at the station. Bordelli left the Beetle in the courtyard, took leave of Piras, and went on foot to the Trattoria da Cesare, on Viale Lavagnini. He greeted the owner and waiters and, as usual, slipped into Totò’s kitchen, where the Apulian cook fought his daily battles between frying pans and clouds of smoke. It was also where the inspector had been taking his meals for years.
Totò was in fine form that day, more or less as he always was. Four feet eleven inches of sheer exuberance and nasty black hair sprouting from every pore. He greeted the inspector and recommended grilled pork chops with black-eyed peas. Bordelli nodded, resigned. He’d entered that kitchen many times swearing he would eat lightly, but rarely if ever had he kept his vow. He sat down and waited for Totò to fill his plate with those gifts of God.
‘Have a taste of this, Inspector … Allow me to teach a Florentine how these things should be made.’