“Look out, it could have rabies,” said Italo. He’d never much liked dogs.
“What are you talking about? What rabies? Look how skinny he is.” Then she spoke to the dog in a different tone of voice, as if by speaking two notches higher it could understand her: “Have you not been eating? How long has it been since you had anything to eat?”
“Come on, Cate. Pretty soon, it’s going to be dark.”
“Come here, boy!” she said, and picked up the little dog. He was a puppy. A setter/shepherd mix, along with twenty-seven other strains. “Come here. Oh, you’re shivering!”
“You can’t seriously be thinking about taking it away with us.”
“Oh, no? Am I supposed to leave him here!”
“You want to take this stray mutt that smells bad and probably has fleas in the car?”
“You can always just stay here and walk back to Aosta, if you want.”
“The rules don’t. . . .”
“Officer Pierron! You’re speaking to an inspector of superior rank to your own, and she hereby orders you to stop being a pain in the ass and march straight back to the squad car.”
“Unbelievable!” muttered Italo under his breath.
“Pay no attention to that mean old man. You come here to mamma . . .” and clutching the puppy to her breast, the inspector headed back toward the car.
The sun was setting. And the chances of finding Chiara were dropping with it.
“Certainly, I’m glad to stay on the line, of course. Thank you.”
“What do they say?” asked Antonio. Rocco gestured that he still didn’t know. Antonio grabbed a pack of cigarettes and lit one. Rocco yanked the lit cigarette out of his hand and stuck it between his lips. Antonio threw both arms wide in exasperation and repeated the process.
“Chesterfields? Not you, too?” Rocco cried with a disgusted look. “Why have you all started buying this disgusting brand of cigarettes?”
Antonio shook his head and lit his cigarette.
“Yes, I’m still on the line. Tell me.” Rocco listened. Antonio had pulled out his pen and was ready to take down any information on a business card.
“Yes? Yesssssss!” Rocco jumped for joy. “All right, then, we head up toward the village of Closel . . . two-and-a-half miles after the intersection, we continue straight. . . .”
Antonio was writing. The scrap of paper was already practically full. He went on writing on the palm of his hand. “Yes. Two more miles, and then on the right, just before the fork in the road. Thank you, thank you!” Rocco ended the call. “Adelmo Rosset has a piece of property, a half-falling down bunker . . . a shepherd’s hut, a little farther up.” And he took off for the car. Antonio followed him, smiling.
“I’ll drive, Antonio. You get on the radio and call everyone in. Tell them to come here!”
At high speed, Rocco was driving up through a series of hairpin curves toward the village of Closel. His cell phone rang.
“No. Please,” he said, grabbing his phone. “Don’t tell me that the land office clerk was wrong!” He answered: “Schiavone!”
“Rocco, it’s me, Adele!”
“Adele. This isn’t a good time.”
“I’m here, in Aosta.”
“How nice. Listen, the keys are at the police station. Go and get comfortable at my place. We’ll see you tonight.”
“But where are you?”
“You don’t want to know. We’ll talk later.”
And he hung up the phone.
“Should you really be thinking about women at a time like this?”
“Antonio, I told you you could use my first name, but now you’re pushing your luck.”
“Sorry. . . .”
“All right, now, the fork in the road is down there . . . There’s supposed to be a dirt road running uphill on the right. . . .”
In the summer, these mountains had to be full of beautiful emerald-green meadows with placid grazing cows ruminating in the bright sunshine or resting in the shade of the fir trees. Now, however, there was only the occasional tiny black dot of a crow here and there, hopping along in search of something to eat, and rivulets of water running under the blanket of snow down onto the road, muddying the edges. There were rocks dotted with white, up high, covering up the sky, like so many giant Christmas candies.
“There it is!”
Two straight tree branches with the bark skinned off, set upright in the middle of the snow, indicated the presence of a track running up into the mountains. Directly on their left there was a house. But it was inhabited. Rocco discarded it. “It must be on this rough dirt road.” Rocco accelerated. The wheels had a good grip and the vehicle zipped along confidently, bouncing on the bumps of the mountain track. They rounded a curve and in the distance spotted a roof hidden in the midst of the fir branches.
“Is that it?” asked Antonio.
“Maybe so.”
As they gradually drew closer, the roof turned into a small, one-story house. It was made entirely of stone and it was planted on a steep slope, surrounded by boulders and trees. All around it, the snow was untouched. Only the two black eyes of the windows of that mountain hut seemed to stare aghast at the approaching car. Suddenly, out of the underbrush, an orange cat crossed the road and the deputy chief only narrowly avoided hitting it.
“Fuck!”
“That’s good,” said Antonio. “Orange cats are lucky. If it was black, that would have meant trouble.”
They reached the isolated house. Only Rocco got out of the car, moving fast. Antonio was on the radio, trying to explain to all the other officers exactly where they were.
Getting inside on the ground floor was easy. Only a few old boards nailed up over the doorway blocked their way, and they were quickly removed. Aside from a rusty old gas stove and a ramshackle wooden staircase leading up to a cobweb-covered attic, the place was empty. Ancient streaks of birdshit covered the walls. Looking up, they could see the sky through the few surviving terracotta roof tiles. Rocco turned around in the narrow hallway. There was a half-shut door in one of the larger rooms. It opened onto a stone staircase leading down to the floor below. Taking care not to slip and fall, the deputy chief descended the steps and came to an old wooden door locked with a chain that ran through a hole in the wall to the other side. The chain, like the padlock, was gleaming new. Rocco tried to push the door open: “Chiara? Chiara Berguet? Chiara, are you here?”
“Antonio! Hurry!”
The Sicilian policeman got out of the car. “Did you find her?” he shouted as he came running toward the house.
“Get over here!”
He led him down and showed him the wooden door. “This chain is brand new.”
“Chiara?” shouted Scipioni.
“She doesn’t answer. But I know she’s here.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Break down this fucking door!”
There wasn’t much room to get a running start. Antonio hit the door lightly a couple of times to test its resistance, then he slammed all of his muscular six-foot-four frame and two hundred pounds of mass against the old wooden planks. The door was rendered asunder like a flimsy spider web. Carried forward by the inertia of the impact, Antonio hurtled into the room.
Lying on the floor, her hands tied to a broken section of a chair, in the middle of a puddle of blood, was Chiara Berguet!
The doctor had been brisk and pitiless, as only doctors know how to be. Chiara had lost a lot of blood, her pressure was dizzyingly low; in short, it was just a miracle that she was still alive. Dehydrated to the verge of survivability, it was only thanks to her youth and a strong, stubborn makeup that she could still be counted among the living. A vicious wound in her left thigh, caused by a snapping chair leg that had then stabbed her directly in the biceps femoris. What’s more, there was clear evidence of rape. Now she was in intensive care and no one could even approach the door to her room. Rocco had walked away, making phone calls to deliver the good news to Judge Baldi
and to the chief of police, who had immediately called a press conference, which Rocco had sidestepped by the simple expedient of turning off his cell phone and pretending that the call had been cut off.
As he left the hospital he had glanced out the window and glimpsed Pietro and Giuliana Berguet arriving. Thanks to the kind assistance of a male nurse, he’d managed to scamper out via a side exit—a tradesman’s entrance—thus managing to fend off the scenes of tearful gratitude and extended hugs. Just let them be happy to get their daughter back: so long and farewell.
In spite of the fact that night had fallen over Aosta, his day still wasn’t over.
“Let’s go, Italo. And give me a cigarette!”
Smiling, Italo started the engine. “Well, we did it, right?”
“Until we get there, please give me some silence. I’m a wreck.”
Italo obeyed and continued driving.
The sledgehammer had come down. He understood it now. Every time that Rocco got to the end of a case, he found himself shrouded in a dark mist, like a mountain enveloped by a cloud. Italo had often wondered why it was, but he just couldn’t figure it out. Italo felt happy, sometimes he even got goose bumps. In short, they’d worked together and they’d finally broken the puzzle, solved the case. Instead Rocco seemed miserable. A wreck.
“Why do you do this?” By now, the close terms they were on allowed him to ask such a personal question.
“Why do I do what, Italo?”
“Why do you get so grim? I mean, fuck, we won, didn’t we?”
“What did we win? Can’t you see? Don’t you feel it? Every time you have anything to do with these people, with this shit, a little bit of you turns to shit as well. Don’t doubt it. Little by little, more and more, and then the day comes when you look at yourself in the mirror and you ask yourself: who is this man I’m looking at? And old age has nothing to do with it, Italo, I’m talking about something I have deep inside me. It dies every day from this filth. From this mud. I can’t take it any more, I can’t stand to go on diving into this sewer. Getting dirty, turning into some kind of rat from putting my hands onto these people. I can’t stand it anymore. Look at my shoes. You see them?” and he raised his right foot. It looked like an old tire abandoned on the side of the highway. “That’s the way I am now.”
“The organization had its base in the Posillipo Pizzeria and the HeyDiddleLiddles shop. They’d dragged a lot of people into their web by the loans they made. They must have infiltrated Edil.ber through the good offices of Cristiano Cerruti. They were probably only doing it for the money. Then Cristiano must have started having troubles with his conscience, he must have stumbled and made it clear that he was starting to repent. Who knows, maybe he was thinking of going to the police. But it was too late. Domenico Cuntrera murdered him and took off. Now he’s probably holed up with Cutrì in Lugano or who knows where else. They’re not going to loosen their grip though, sir. These aren’t people who leave the job half finished.”
“But at least Edil.ber is safe?” asked the chief of police.
“It’s safe.”
“So explain about that Max, the boyfriend. Why was he talking to those two guys in the discotheque?”
“Because Max’s father is a doctor. And Max gets busy at the high school pushing psychopharmaceuticals. He was the source of the Stilnox, the rape drug, for Carlo Figus. They used it to put Chiara to sleep.”
“Does the poor girl know she was raped?”
“No, sir. I didn’t tell her. Probably, if she survives, she won’t remember a thing. There’s just one thing that needs to be done, but I have neither the power nor the proof. I’m sure that the Vallée Savings Bank is behind this whole story somehow. They were the ones who directed people in need of loans to these ’ndrangheta mobsters, probably presenting them as reliable, respectable businessmen.”
“Do you plan to investigate?”
“Why not? I’ve talked about it with Judge Baldi. He’s already working on it.”
“Who’s at the pizzeria now?”
“The judge, a few officers. More or less, the whole gang is there.”
“And where are you?”
“In my office. It’s really late and I’m a wreck.”
“I talked to the DIA. This falls under their jurisdiction as an organized crime operation. Will you come to the press conference? It’s important. A Mafia-style crime organization operating unhindered in Aosta is the kind of news that will make the news anchors of half the country jump out of their chairs!”
“Have mercy, Chief Costa. Just let me sleep in tomorrow.”
“At least give me a brief report.”
“I’ll have one of my men do it. Good night.”
“Good night, Schiavone.”
He put down the receiver and wiped his ear. Everyone in the office was staring at him. “People, we’ve done an outstanding job.”
Casella’s teeth were chattering from the cold. Antonio and Italo were dropping on their feet. Curcio and Penzo were sprawled on the office couch, practically snoring as they nodded off. The young Neapolitan, on the other hand, seemed to have just stepped out of a refreshing shower.
“What’s your name?”
The young man replied: “Pietro Miniero.”
“Pietro Miniero, you’ve officially drawn the winning straw. It’s your job to write up the report for the chief of police. Leave it on my desk tomorrow morning.”
“Yessir,” and Pietro Miniero was the first to leave the room.
“Casella, you go home, you definitely have a fever. I told you to bundle up. And you two can go too.” Curcio and Penzo left the room, trailing after Casella.
A yelp, faint but perceptible, pierced the air. “Who’s got a stomachache?”
Italo, Antonio, and Caterina exchanged glances. “I don’t know,” said Antonio. Rocco looked at Caterina. “What do you have under your jacket?”
Caterina opened the jacket and the little dog could be seen. The puppy was asleep, and had yelped in some puppy dream. “We found him in a house up in the mountains. I didn’t have the heart to leave him there.”
“I tried to tell her, Rocco, that she shouldn’t have, but she insisted.”
Rocco got up from his chair. He walked over to Caterina. “It smells.”
“He was filthy, wet, and starving.”
“She was filthy, wet, and starving. Can’t you see that it’s a female?” said Rocco. Then he reached out and took the puppy in his arms. She barely woke up, opened her eyes, and with a tongue that darted out fast as an arrow, licked the tip of the deputy chief’s nose. “Are you going to keep her?” Rocco asked.
Caterina replied, “I don’t know. I can’t keep her at home. I thought there might be some association. . . .”
“Well, you were wrong. Do you know what her name is?”
“No,” said Caterina. “It’s an abandoned dog, how could I know?”
“Her name is Lupa. She-Wolf. A good Roman name. Ciao, Lupa. How are you? Welcome!” said Rocco. The puppy, as if she’d understood every word, licked his nose again. “Do you all like my new dog?” asked the deputy chief.
Caterina smiled. “So you’re taking it, sir?”
“Of course, who could resist? Come on, time for you all to go home. Italo, I expect you to take Caterina out to celebrate in a real restaurant, and not some filthy dive like the Posillipo Pizzeria!” Italo smiled. Then the three officers turned to go. “Hold on a second,” Rocco called after them. “Where are Deruta and D’Intino?”
“We don’t know. We haven’t heard from them since this afternoon. They haven’t been answering their phones or the radio, either,” said Caterina. “What should we do?”
“Alert the forest rangers and the mountain guides. Maybe they’ll find them tomorrow morning frozen solid,” and with his new companion snug in his arms, Rocco left the office with only one objective in mind: to go home and get some sleep.
By the light of a bonfire, clutching each other close to ward off the biting
cold in a ruined mountain hut, at an elevation of roughly 5,250 feet, D’Intino and Deruta were shivering and praying through chattering teeth that day would dawn soon. Their car, half buried in a snow-covered ditch, rested in the gleaming light of the moon.
“This is the last time I’m going to let you drive, D’Intino.”
“Don’t you have anything to eat?”
But Deruta didn’t answer. He walked over to the fire and rubbed his hands together.
Rocco was striding through the streets of the center of Aosta at a brisk pace, eager to get home as quickly as possible. Lupa had fallen asleep and was breathing deeply. Tomorrow he’d take her to the veterinarian and get her dewormed, microchipped, and thoroughly vaccinated.
A few yards from his building, a shadow stepped away from the wall. The figure carried a cardboard box in one hand. By the light of the streetlamp, the shadow revealed its identity: it was Anna. Rocco looked at her.
“What do you have there?” he asked.
“I could ask you the same thing,” Anna replied.
“I have a dog. Her name is Lupa.”
Anna took a few steps forward. The heels of her boots echoed in the deserted Rue Piave. “I got you this. Since the ones you’re wearing look pretty well shot!”
A new pair of shoes. “You’re starting to cost me, Schiavone. Two pairs in two days is a little lavish, don’t you think?”
Rocco smiled. “So it was you . . . thanks.”
“Don’t you want to try them on?”
“Here in the middle of the street?”
“Come on upstairs. I have a mirror that reaches all the way to the floor.”
“What about Lupa?”
“Lupa? Huh?”
“Her name is Lupa.”
“I have some very nice cushions for Lupa, too.”
“I’m not going to sleep over, though.”
“Who even invited you?”
Rocco looked at her. He sensed that, for this one time at least, it would be so nice to just give in, let go, not overthink it, not put up resistance, without feeling obliged to ruin anything that happened to him. He’d saved one life, he had another one in his arms. Just once, every now and then, he could try smiling. And life might even smile back. So Rocco did, he smiled as he turned his face up to the sky. And a solitary star winked down at him from above the clouds.
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