The woman nodded. “Why?”
“Our officer from the highway patrol found it . . .”
“Where did you find it?”
“Up at Saint-Nicolas . . . a little the worse for wear,” said Umberto.
“But how could that be?” asked Giuliana Berguet. “I hardly ever use the car but . . . my brother-in-law Marcello does, and I’m sure that yesterday he parked right outside in the street. . . .”
“And this morning it was all the way over in Saint-Nicolas,” said Rocco. “Now we have our suspicions. . . .” and he let the phrase linger in the silence of the hallway as he carefully observed the woman’s face. She was swallowing and clutching her left hand so tightly with her right hand that she was cutting off the circulation. “What . . . what do you suspect, Deputy Chief?”
“That this car might have been used in an armed robbery carried out last night at a jeweler’s down in the city.” Giuliana nodded. And it seemed to Rocco that she heaved a sigh of relief. “Is your husband at home?”
“No!” Giuliana replied as promptly as a little kid shouting, “Tag, you’re it!” And as if determined to contradict her, a man emerged from the other side of the hallway. Rocco, Italo, and Umberto turned to look at him. “Who are these gentlemen?”
“They’re from the police,” Giuliana hastened to reply. “They found the car in Saint-Nicolas. It seems that last night someone stole it to use it in a jewelry store robbery.”
“And what makes you think so?” asked the man, turning his eyes to the policemen. Rocco took a step toward him: “Deputy Chief Schiavone, Aosta police headquarters.”
“My pleasure. I’m Marcello Berguet. I’m the Signora’s brother-in-law, her husband’s brother.”
“Ah, so you’re the one who used the car last night?”
“Certainly, I almost always use it. And I’m sure that I parked it in the street outside last night. Aosta may have a lot of problems, but parking isn’t one of them . . .” he said with a smile. “Anyway, what makes you so sure that the car was used in an armed robbery?”
“A closed-circuit video camera filmed the whole robbery. They plowed into the plate glass window using the front of the Signora’s car.”
“Well, how do you like that?” said the man. “Well, we were all here last night. And I swear that I parked it right downstairs in the street.”
“I know that,” and Rocco smiled. “I know that, and I don’t have any suspicions that you might have been involved in a jewelry store robbery. In short, I hardly think you need to fence stolen jewelry, do you?”
Giuliana and Marcello both laughed, though their laughter was forced. “No, no, I’d say not.”
Rocco looked over at the highway patrol officer: “Thank you for your help, officer, you may go now!”
Umberto, faithful to the script, gave the deputy chief a snappy salute, smiled at Giuliana and Marcello, and then left the house.
“In any case,” Schiavone resumed, “Signora, I’m going to have to ask you to come with me to police headquarters. There are a few boring routine procedures we’re going to have to get out of the way. You’ve been the victim of a felony crime, after all. I hope to make you waste as little time as possible.”
“But, you understand, I have something to. . . .”
Giuliana looked over at her brother-in-law, who froze in place, unsure what to do next.
“No, I can’t come with you. I mean to say, first I have some prior commitments. Can I . . . can I catch up with you down there a little later?”
“Signora Berguet,” Rocco said patiently, “I’m not inviting you to a cocktail party. This is something very different, let me assure you.”
The woman chewed her lip. Then she looked at the policemen. “I can’t come. I have a very important appointment. At ten o’clock.”
“We’ll certainly be done by then. Trust me,” the deputy chief insisted.
“I . . . I have to stay at home, is that clear?” the woman said. And she sat down on a Louis Something-Or-Other settee that creaked under her feather weight.
“Why is that, Signora? Are you not feeling well?”
Giuliana put her hands over her face and started shaking her head. “No, I’m not feeling well. I’m not feeling well at all!” It was a cry of despair, heartbreaking, so piercing it raised goose bumps. Her brother-in-law hurried to her side and tried to comfort her, but Signora Berguet, in the throes of a burst of rage, threw her head back and glared at Rocco, her eyes red with weeping. “I’m only leaving this house with my lawyer. I’m calling him this minute and I’ll ask him if this is normal police procedure. Barging into a person’s home at seven in the morning to drag them off to police headquarters! I’m the victim here, let’s make that clear! My car was stolen, it’s not like I stole it myself! Why would I have to come downtown? No, Deputy Chief, I’m not coming. Go ahead, file a criminal complaint, handcuff me if you must, but I’m not willingly setting foot outside this house!”
Rocco smiled. He gestured to Italo to head toward the front door. He seemed satisfied. “Whatever you say, Signora Berguet. I can see that you’re on edge and tired and I don’t want to make life any harder for you than it already is. Can’t I do anything to help you?”
Rocco’s question fell into a pool of the utmost silence. Italo had opened the front door and was standing on the threshold, waiting for his boss and looking back at Giuliana, who was in turn looking at Marcello, who was watching Rocco. The deputy chief had the feeling that the woman was about to shout: “Yes, you can do a great deal for me! Bring me back my daughter!” Instead, it was the brother-in-law who replied: “Thanks, deputy chief, but there’s nothing you can do. Believe me.”
Suddenly the phone rang and the sound rang through the whole house. Giuliana Berguet started as if someone had touched her with a live electrical wire. She was staring at her brother-in-law, who mopped the sweat off his lip. Imperturbably, Rocco observed them. At the third ring, the woman stood up: “Excuse me,” she said, but Rocco was faster. He handed her the cordless: “Here you are, Signora.”
Giuliana grabbed the telephone, which Marcello in turn tore from her hands and, finally, on the fifth ring, answered, turning his back to them and striding out into the hallway, toward the living room behind the glass doors. “Excuse me,” he said. But Marcello never reached the living room. He suddenly turned around and shouted into the receiver: “No, I’m not interested in a single contract for electricity water and gas!” and then hurled the phone into a cozy, upholstered armchair. “These call centers . . . they’re intolerable, don’t you find?”
The sky had clouded over. Italo was driving in silence and Rocco had already lit a cigarette. “Don’t tell me that it’s starting to rain again?”
“Eminently possible,” Italo replied.
They drove through the intersection, leaving the Berguet home behind them. On the side of the road, at the intersection with the state highway, Umberto was waiting for them on his motorcycle. Italo pulled over. Rocco rolled down his window. “Electricity water and gas?” he asked.
“Nothing better occurred to me.” And Umberto gave the cell phone back to the deputy chief.
“It’s fine. Thanks, Umberto. You were very helpful.”
“Glad to be of service, sir. If you need anything else, give a call whenever you like. Ah. And what about the Signora’s car? Shall we take care of it?”
“Yes, if you could. Thanks.”
Umberto smiled and revved the BMW motorcycle: practically popping a wheelie, he vanished around the curve.
“Not at all bad, this Umberto.”
“We went to high school together.”
“And what do the two of you do?”
“Nothing much. We play a few games of pool now and then. We’re both fixated on sports betting. He follows the soccer championships, basketball, skiing. . . .”
“And do you win?”
“So far, we’re up by 400 euros. Not bad, eh?”
Rocco made a face.
&n
bsp; “You feeling pessimistic about this, Rocco?” Italo was no longer talking about the online sports betting site, SISAL.
“Does that strike you as a normal reaction for a normal phone call? And does it seem to you that the Signora had a normal reaction at being asked to come down to police headquarters? It doesn’t strike me as good at all.”
“So you’re saying that her daughter . . . ?”
“No doubt about it.”
“Edil.ber belongs to Pietro Berguet, who owns a 75 percent share. The rest of the company belongs to his brother Marcello, who doesn’t actually work there, though. He’s a math teacher at Aosta’s scientific high school. The company builds apartment buildings and private houses but also larger public works. They were one of the contractors who worked on the airport, built a highway interchange, and renovated Fort Bard . . . they’re competing for some public works the regional government is getting ready to assign.” Caterina Rispoli reeled out like a hypnotic mantra all the information she’d been able to assemble in a few hours’ work. “Their total annual profits are twelve million euros, they have twenty full-time employees plus an assortment of specialized workers under contract. Bricklayers, carpenters, and so on.”
“In other words, they’ve created jobs and prosperity for a fair number of people,” Antonio Scipioni concluded.
“Yes, but I found a couple of articles from the past few months,” Caterina went on. “Things aren’t actually going all that well.”
Rocco stepped away from the window. He was observing the black clouds that were gathering in the sky over Aosta.
“What do you mean?”
“The papers are talking about a downturn. Workers locked out of the plant, delayed paychecks, the usual cheerful array of things.”
“And then what happened?”
“Then apparently everything turned out for the best, or at least I didn’t find any more articles.”
“I need to go have a chat with this Pietro Berguet. Does anyone have a suggestion about how to do it?”
“Could you dream up another criminal complaint like you did with his wife?” Caterina suggested, and then blew her nose into a Kleenex.
“Or else a regular audit?” asked Antonio Scipioni.
“An audit of what?” Schiavone objected.
“I’ve got it!” Italo shouted. “Carlo Figus, the worker killed in the crash the other night. Let’s say that we have indications that he worked for them, and then we can just go and ask a few questions.”
“That’s a good idea. Nice work, Italo.” Then he shot a glance at Caterina Rispoli. “Inspector, if you’re not feeling up to it, you can certainly go home.”
“No no, I’m better. And after all, to tell the truth, staying home bores me.” She shot off the first smile of the day, which illuminated her face. Even in this state, brutalized with the flu and a cold, Caterina Rispoli was a purebred, an outstanding woman. With the sweetness of a mother and the diabolical mischief of an older sister.
“Sure you’re not making a foolish mistake?”
“Positive, Deputy Chief.”
“Speaking of foolish mistakes. An hour ago we heard from D’Intino and Deruta,” said Officer Scipioni.
“And where are they?” asked Caterina.
“They have a key and they’re trying to figure out what door it goes to,” Rocco explained.
Caterina’s eyes opened wide. “A needle in a haystack?”
“Worse. The hair of a cow in a stampeding herd,” Rocco corrected her. “And what did the two of them want?”
“Nothing, you know how much they hate me. They wanted to talk to you and they wouldn’t tell me anything. He said that you ordered them to report only to you.”
“As per their instructions. Okay, who cares about the De Rege Brothers. Shall we go, Italo?”
“Where?”
“To the offices of Edil.ber, what’s the matter with you, feeling sleepy?” He stood up. He grabbed his loden overcoat. He stuck a hand in the pocket. “Ah, Caterina. Did you ever play this game at school?” He handed her a scrap of paper.
“What game, sir?”
“With a pencil? You rub the edge of the graphite point over it, and a phrase emerges?”
“Certainly, me and my friends would do it all the time in school. We’d write secret messages on a sheet of paper and throw it away, keeping the sheet of paper from underneath so that the pen left a deep but invisible impression. Then if you rubbed a pencil on top of it, you could read it.”
“Very good. Would you take a look at this and see if there are any secrets on this little sheet of paper?”
Italo recognized it. It was the scrap of pale green paper that Rocco had taken off the notepad at the Berguet residence.
Caterina blackened it with her pencil. “Huh . . . there are some numbers. And there’s a word . . . hold on,” she squinted to see better. “Huh . . . Deflan, I think it says Deflan.”
“What’s that?”
“Hold on . . .” The inspector hurried over to Rocco’s computer. She started typing. “It’s a pharmaceutical. Let’s see, it’s an anti-inflammatory. Used to treat rheumatism, gastric inflammation . . . it says here: treatment of pathologies of inflammatory origin.”
“Okay, well obviously the doctor must have prescribed it for the woman or her husband,” said Italo.
“What about the numbers?”
“Nothing that resembles a phone number.”
“Oh well, that was a dud. Let’s go, Italo.”
The offices of Edil.ber weren’t far from the airport. They were in a modern office building made of glass and mirrors. A large white gate led into the company parking area. Rocco and Italo left their car there. They started walking toward the central building when the deputy chief noticed something on the metal fencing. A white banner fluttering in the wind. He walked over to it and unfurled it to show Italo. It was just a tattered section of torn protest streamer. It could be read clearly, “We’ve Had It With . . .” and then, “Our Jobs!” At the end of the phrase were the initials of a trade union. That was all that remained of a recent demonstration.
The two policemen went back toward the building made of glass and mirrors, opened the door, and entered the offices of Edil.ber.
Facing the front door, they found a panel that indicated the location of the various offices with an array of arrows. Executive offices were on the second floor.
When the elevator opened, they found themselves looking out into a small round lobby. On the white walls hung photographs of projects undertaken by the company. Hangars, bridges, buildings. And sketches of projects. The sound of footsteps was muffled by the navy-blue wall-to-wall carpeting. A powerfully built woman who looked about sixty came walking toward him.
“May I help you?”
“Deputy Chief Schiavone, Aosta police headquarters.”
The woman gulped.
“Who’s in charge here?”
“Who’s . . . Dottor Berguet. Pietro Berguet. Can I ask the reason for your visit?”
“No, you cannot. Where is he?”
The woman pointed at a door with “President’s Office” written on it, in fire engine red.
“Will you announce us or shall we just go on in?”
The secretary snapped out of it and went to knock on the door. She opened it slightly, stuck her face in, said something, and turned to look at Rocco and Italo.
“Go right in,” she said, and stood aside to let them pass.
Inside the room were two men. One was sitting on a white leather sofa, the other stood in front of the plate glass window and was nervously smoking a cigarette. Rocco took a wild guess and turned to the man who was smoking. “Hello, Schiavone, deputy chief of police, Aosta.”
The man standing by the window came toward him, stretching his mouth into a ceremonial smile. His face was tense, he had dark circles under his eyes, his tie was undone and, though he clearly wore a first-rate suit, it was rumpled and creased. When he was relaxed and rested, he was probably a
handsome man, with light-colored eyes and a dark, curly head of hair. But now he looked more like a heavily used cleaning rag. “I’m Pietro Berguet,” he said, crushing his cigarette out in the ashtray that already contained a small mountain of crumpled butts. He extended his hand, and Rocco shook it. His palms were sweaty. “And this is Dottor Cristiano Cerruti, vice president of the company,” he said, pointing to the man sitting on the sofa. Cerruti didn’t even bother to stand, limiting himself to a faint, desultory smile. He wore a well-tended little beard, the kind that requires hours to keep neatly trimmed and aligned, like a grass tennis court at Wimbledon. His suit, too, needed pressing. “What can I do for you, sir? My wife told me that you stopped by my house this morning. Is this still about the stolen car?”
“No. At the police department we’re masters of multitasking, aren’t we, Pierron?”
“Certainly.”
“Just think, Dottor Berguet, my officer here is capable of driving, making a phone call, and at the same time chewing a stick of gum.”
Pietro Berguet looked at Rocco Schiavone as if he were a visitor from another galaxy.
“And since we’re masters of multitasking, we have more than one problem to solve. Now then . . .” Rocco reached out a hand and Italo handed him a sheet of paper. “Did Carlo Figus work for you?”
Pietro Berguet thought it over for a moment. “Hold on, just like that . . . I wouldn’t really know. Shall I ask human resources?”
“If you would.”
“But why do you want to know?” asked the president as he picked up the telephone that sat on his glass desktop.
“He’s been in a crash and now he’s dead. It happened last night. On the road to Saint-Vincent.”
Pietro Berguet opened both eyes wide. “I’m sorry to hear that. Fabio? Listen, does Carlo Figus work for us?” He sat and listened in silence. “Thank you . . . thanks, Fabio.” And he hung up.
“Yes, Carlo Figus worked for us for a couple of years, from 2001 to 2003. But this is a terrible thing. How did it happen?”
Rocco looked at Italo. He was tired of talking and he left the job to his subordinate. The officer began: “The accident was caused by old tires. The van had a blowout and slammed into a pair of trees. He was killed instantly.”
Out of Season Page 8