“I’d consider that show of personal concern for my health to be the mark of a person with a badly warped psyche, if you want my sincere opinion.” Caterina was starting to wake up.
“It would, wouldn’t it? But actually, I’m not. I’m really trying to track down Italo. Who’s right there beside you, isn’t he? Tell me the truth.”
A series of noises could be heard, followed by Italo’s voice rising from the depths like some obscure underwater creature. “Yes, sir. . . .”
“You need to come to police headquarters.”
“. . . at two in the morning?”
“At two in the morning. Something very bad has happened.”
“Am I allowed to know what it is?”
“No. It’s a surprise.”
“Is this a tenth degree?” Italo asked in a very small voice.
“A full-blown case of it, Italo, my friend, a full-blown case. And there’s no time to lose.”
“What about her grandmother in Abano Terme?”
“I called the hotel. She checked in alone, without any granddaughter accompanying her, as I expected.”
“Yes, but what are we going to do about it at three in the morning?”
Rocco put out the umpteenth cigarette of that nightmarish early morning. “We have two alternatives. It’s up to us to decide what to do. The first option is to wake up the judge and request authorization to put bugs on the phones, talk to the chief of police, and then to the family, and thereby expose the girl to an incredible risk because some journalist might happen to be at police headquarters or at the district attorney’s office.”
“True. The favorite sport at district attorney’s offices everywhere is scattering confidential information to the four winds.” Italo lowered his head as if trying to come up with a solution. Then he looked up again, with an uncertain expression on his face. “What’s the second alternative?”
“We could go pay a call at the Berguet residence.”
“At this time of night?”
“At six o’clock.”
“And what are we going to do until six o’clock?”
“There are lots of things we can do. But I’d need Caterina. Does she still have a fever?”
“A little. But maybe she could come into the office. What about D’Intino and Deruta?”
“For now, I’ve just made sure they’re awake and I’ve sent them out onto the street.”
“But why?”
“Because I hate them. Now come with me, we need a Trojan horse.”
“A what?”
Rocco didn’t bother to reply. He’d already grabbed his loden overcoat and now he was striding briskly out of the office, leaving all the lights on behind him. Italo Pierron at this point had no choice but to follow him.
Schiavone had parked outside the house in the village of Porossan, a little villa that dated back to the twenties. Made of stone and wood and abounding in flowers, it was surrounded by a forest of fir trees. It was covered with climbing wisteria vines that reached up to the second story and, in just a few days, were certain to explode their purple blooms like rifle shots. That was the lovely residence of the Berguet family. Plunged in darkness at four in the morning. Rocco and Italo walked over toward a dark blue car.
“What are you planning to do, Rocco?”
“Is that Giuliana Berguet’s Suzuki Jimny?”
“Yes it is, as registered with the motor vehicles department,” Italo replied. “Why do you want to know?”
“A very nice little car, too expensive, and frankly not my personal favorite. It’s noisy and it doesn’t handle all that well. It originated as an off-road vehicle, and, truth be told, it does pretty well on rough terrain.”
“Rocco, I don’t want to buy the car, I want to know what we’re supposed to be doing here at four in the morning!”
Rocco offered no reply and instead simply inserted a pointy metallic object into the car’s door lock. He pulled open the door and gave Italo a big smile. “Follow me with the squad car,” and he climbed behind the wheel of Giuliana Berguet’s vehicle.
As he was heading back to his own car, Italo heard the roar of the Suzuki engine echoing through the silence of the predawn hour. Shaking his head, he thought how clear it was that Rocco Schiavone had missed his true calling.
After a half-hour drive on the state highway 26, they arrived in Saint-Nicolas. Rocco braked. He got out of the car. He found a rock and smashed the two headlights.
“What, has he lost his mind?” Italo muttered under his breath as he waited in the squad car.
Rocco walked over to the car, wiping his hands.
“What did you just do?” asked Italo.
“Those bastards! They stole a car and left it broken and abandoned twenty miles outside of Aosta. Luckily that friend of yours from the highway patrol, the one who always beats you at pool, what’s his name? Umberto?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he just happened to find it up here. He got suspicious because someone clearly vandalized it. What a stroke of luck.”
Italo looked at Rocco blankly. “But you damaged their car!”
“Aside from the fact that they have insurance, remember, they’re wealthy builders. It’s just a rough guess, but I’d say that they have the 400 euros to get it fixed. Now, give Umberto a call and tell him the whole story. This Umberto is a smart guy, right?”
“A very smart guy.”
“So he knows how to keep a secret?”
“Does he really have a choice?”
Rocco thought it over for a handful of seconds. “No, I don’t think he does. There’s always a nice busy intersection down in Secondigliano where they need a traffic cop. Come on, give him a call, maybe while you’re driving us back into the city. Can you do both things at the same time?”
“I think so. And I believe I could do both things and chew a stick of gum, too. But I still don’t understand exactly what it is we’re doing. . . .”
“It’s a Trojan horse!” and with that, the deputy chief slipped his hand into Italo’s pocket and grabbed his cigarette pack. He grimaced at the sight of it, but lit one anyway.
At six in the morning, Inspector Caterina Rispoli entered Rocco Schiavone’s office wrapped in a scarf that left only her eyes uncovered. She smelled fresh and clean, with a whiff of eucalyptus ointment. Standing next to the deputy chief was Officer Scipioni, with a day’s growth of whiskers. Italo, on the other hand, was seated at the desk.
“Hello . . .” Caterina greeted the three men in a faint voice.
“You look like a Berber,” Rocco said with a smile. “Please, go ahead and take a seat, and forgive me. . . .”
Caterina sat down next to Italo. Rocco didn’t miss Italo’s apprehensive glance.
He really loves her, he thought to himself.
The deputy chief rubbed his hands together. Outside, a faint morning light was dawning. “Very good, now that we’re all here, I need you to listen to me. There’s something very grave that only we four in all of police headquarters can know. I have grounds to believe that a young woman named Chiara Berguet has been kidnapped.”
Scipioni and Rispoli stared wide-eyed. Caterina even threw in a cough or two.
“But of course, there has been no official report lodged. Now, how was I planning to proceed?”
“I imagine without saying anything to the district attorney’s office or the chief of police?” suggested Antonio Scipioni.
“Very good, Antonio. But if you don’t mind, if there’s one thing I hate, it’s rhetorical questions.”
“Did I do that?” the policeman asked with some embarrassment.
“Yes. You just did. In this working group, rhetorical questions are prohibited. But let’s go on. Now then, I need you, Caterina, to get me all the information you can find about Edil.ber, the family’s construction company. Revenue, payments, financial situation, everything.”
Caterina nodded.
“Antonio, stick close to Caterina. In the field. If you need t
o go pay a call on someone, first inform me, then, seeing that our Inspector Rispoli is feverish, I want you to go instead. Is that clear?”
Antonio Scipioni nodded without speaking. He still hadn’t fully understood this thing about rhetorical questions.
“Italo and I, on the other hand, are going to focus on the family. And we’ll do our best to come up with something.”
“What if a fellow officer starts asking questions?” Caterina asked.
“Invent something, anything. You’re working for me. You’re trying to find documents for a financial investigation, a tax inquiry. . . .”
“Suspicious transactions for expenditures incurred by the city commission for public works in the context of the special-track financial police operation along the Swiss border?” Scipioni tossed out.
Rocco looked at him seriously. “Strictly in the investigative venue with appropriate jurisdiction, of course!” he added, and then slapped him on the back. “I always knew I could count on you, Antonio! Now I’ll send you up some hot coffee and pastries from the café. You can all work right here, out of my office. There’s just one thing. That desk drawer that’s locked absolutely must remain locked, are we clear?”
Rispoli and Scipioni nodded. Rocco reached into his pocket and tapped the joint that he had just taken from that very same drawer ten minutes earlier. He knew that without it, the day wouldn’t get started right. Together, he and Italo finally left the office.
He had lain in ambush for a good long time. Motionless, alert. Then he’d seen it stick its head out from the thorn bushes next to the house. A leap, but it had simply been too quick for him, and it had hidden in a crack in the wall, too small for him to get into. He lingered a little longer but he quickly tired of waiting and went to crouch by the soot-encrusted window of the old farmhouse. He’d looked inside. Who knew? Maybe the mouse had hidden inside. But he saw no mouse. Instead, there was a girl. In the middle of the room. She was fast asleep, seated on a chair with her back pressed against a cement column. Her hands were bound to the backrest and her head was black, without eyes or a mouth. He scratched behind his ear. The nettles had stung him as he lay in ambush. He carefully licked his paws, first the left one, then the right. He sniffed at the air. He stood up, stretched, and left that old house behind, trotting briskly across the meadows. The bell hanging from his red collar tinkled with each step. Good for snakes. But it was still early in the season. Snakes come out in summer.
His house was on the other side of the hill. But he didn’t feel like going back there. He walked along calmly, brushing past dandelions, gentian plants, and clover. Moss-covered stones surrounded by daisies. There was a bounty of them. He sniffed. A fox had passed by. For sure. Keep an eye out. High above, a crow cawed a couple of times. He had reached the top of the hill. He could see the garden of his house and the roof with the iron rooster. A lizard went darting past ahead of him. He didn’t so much as deign to glance at it, while the lizard, frightened, dove under the mossy rock and hid.
Genghis Khan was just one year old. And there was something that was luring him far from there, from the four comfortable walls of home. It couldn’t be to hunt that disgusting mouse or to chase after stupid, darting lizards. No. If it hadn’t been for this strange sensation, he’d have already caught the mouse at least ten times. Instead it was a somnolence mingled with lust. That May day, Genghis Khan could smell a different perfume. A perfume of flesh and flowers, something wild and something sweet.
“Genghis, where were you? Mamma made you your breakfast!”
The old woman had put the dog’s bowl down on the ground. But the dog had no interest in eating. There was that smell, and a pressure right under his tail was pushing him to get moving. With a single leap, he sailed over the fence and headed straight for the road.
“Genghis, breakfast!”
“Can’t you see that he smells a she-cat in heat? Let him go. He’ll be back when he’s sown his wild oats!” the old man replied with a smile as he was putting away the fruit crates in the yard. “Lucky boy!” and he shot a glance at the patch of orange fur that was darting across the lawn.
His wife looked at him and smiled.
They’d eaten breakfast at Ettore’s Café, and they’d sent a thermos full of coffee and four pastries up for Caterina and Antonio. Rocco had smoked his joint, Italo had smoked a cigarette, and now they were finally outside the Berguet residence. It was twenty minutes to seven. Umberto from the highway patrol was there waiting for them.
“Good,” said Rocco as he got out of the car, “it’s more credible with Umberto here, isn’t it?”
“Sure,” Italo muttered. He’d left the car windows open. The upholstery reeked of cannabis. “What’s up with the joint?” he asked Rocco.
“It’s good for me. It opens up my nervous system, it puts my heart at peace with this piece-of-shit day, and it gives me the strength to go on living. Is that enough?”
“Yes,” Italo replied.
With long strides, Rocco walked over to Umberto. He shook his hand and asked: “So you’ve been fully briefed?”
“Certainly, sir.”
“Do you have Berguet’s phone number?”
“Yes.”
Rocco handed him his cell phone and the registration of the automobile. “Here you go. Now, if you would, let’s start our little skit.” And the three men headed over to the front door.
A good solid minute went by before someone came to answer the door. A Filipina in a white-and-red striped uniform, not much more than three feet tall, looked out seriously at the three policemen.
“What is it?”
“Is Signora Giuliana Berguet at home?”
“What do you want?”
“Police. We need to talk to her.”
“Right now, Siniora is sleeping.”
“You go and wake up?” Rocco asked with a smile.
“I don’t know, because if she is sleeping, maybe she not want to be waked up.”
Rocco heaved a deep sigh. “Let me have first and last name?”
“Of Siniora?”
“No, of you! Your name!” and he pointed to her.
“Dolores.”
“Dolores, go wake up the Siniora. Don’t you see that the Siniore, by which I mean me, is starting to get really really impatient?”
The Filipina seemed to reel slightly, then she stepped to one side and let the policemen through.
“Wait here,” said the housekeeper, and her sandals flapping against her feet, she toddled off through a door.
The architect’s touch in the furnishings could be seen everywhere, even in the scent of cinnamon that wafted through the air. A classical, slightly heavy-handed style, made up of fabrics, cloth on the walls, brocades, gold-leaf mirrors, and large Persian carpets. A revisitation of the Grand Hotel des Bains, but still, it had its allure. On the walls, a succession of early nineteenth-century landscapes, some of them so darkened by the passage of the years that it was no longer possible to distinguish colors or brushstrokes. Over the glass door to the living room, a sixteenth-century nativity enjoyed pride of place, and no doubt it alone was worth more than the whole villa.
Italo and Umberto looked around. “Not bad, eh?”
“I’d have to agree,” said Rocco. “A little overdone, but you can see why.”
“Are those marble floors?”
“Venetian marble,” Rocco specified.
“What about that?” Umberto pointed at an inlaid desk.
Rocco took a closer look. “That’s a bureau Mazarin. It might be walnut. And it looks like an ivory inlay.”
“Expensive stuff?”
“Probably less than 20,000 euros,” said Rocco smugly, as the two policemen gulped back their saliva.
“How do you happen to know these things, Deputy Chief?” Umberto asked.
“My wife used to like them.”
“And now she doesn’t like them anymore?” the highway patrolman asked innocently. Italo jabbed an elbow into the man’s ribs. U
mberto failed to understand the reason why, but refrained from asking any further questions.
Dolores came back, glaring sullenly at the policemen. “Siniora arriving now.”
“Thanks, Dolores. All the best,” and the woman went through a swinging door that must have led to the kitchen.
“Deputy Chief,” Italo began—in the presence of other policemen he used more formal terms of address—“why are we doing this?”
“Look around, catalogue details and impressions, and listen carefully. That’s the work we need to do.”
Distractedly, Rocco walked over to a wood-and-marble credenza set directly across from the front door. He pulled open a drawer. Inside he found Chiara Berguet’s cell phone, the one with the American-flag case. In a silver platter, there was some change, a bunch of keys with a fob in the shape of the letter M and a curious plastic plug, a gilt paperweight, a little bundle of rubber bands. On the shelf, in order, next to a cordless telephone, were a stack of bills, a typewritten sheet of paper signed by the mayor of Aosta, and a notepad.
Italo watched his superior officer rummage around in those objects. He thought he saw Rocco take a pale green scrap of paper off the notepad and stick it in his pocket. Just in the nick of time, because Giuliana Berguet appeared at the living room door. Skinny and tall, curly hair, linen trousers and a long-sleeved T-shirt. She was smiling but beneath the layer of makeup that she’d just put on, it was possible to glimpse a hundredweight of circles under those eyes. The eyes themselves were dead, scared, and they pointlessly tried to give themselves the confident, unruffled demeanor of the grand mistress of the castle. Her cheeks were ashen, their only color the synthetic hue of the foundation, and slightly hollowed and haggard. At a rough guess, she hadn’t slept in many dozens of hours, and looked as if she might faint from one moment to the next. “Gentlemen, what can I do for you?”
“Deputy Chief Rocco Schiavone, Aosta police headquarters.” And Rocco extended a hand in Umberto’s direction. Umberto handed him the registration from the car. “Do you own a blue Suzuki Jimny with license plates . . .” and here he read from the registration, “DD 343 AF?”
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