Gold, Frankincense and Dust

by Valerio Varesi

  “Do you know it?” Pasquariello said.

  The commissario nodded. “Nina Iliescu worked there for a while and then she became the lover of the owner’s husband.”

  The chief of the flying squad gave a malicious grunt. “So the skin trade was part of it after all. Who would have guessed it? What about these two Romanians? Can we put a name to them?” Pasquariello asked the officers.

  “No. Either they’re illegals or else we’re going to have to do lengthy research. Meantime, we’ve taken their fingerprints.”

  “Have a look in the camps of the Roma travellers. It’s likely they come from there,” Soneri suggested, remembering Medioli’s ill-fated flight.

  Pasquariello agreed. “Maybe you’re right. Running off with a car with no licence is typical of them. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “There were some Romanian Romas at Cortile San Martino in the clearing near the rubbish dump. They left a couple of days ago and who knows where they’ve ended up? I requested help to trace them, but we’d need the collaboration of our cousins,” the commissario said, referring to the carabinieri.

  “Is there no way to get them to talk?” Pasquariello asked.

  “No, and even if they did, they’d give a false name. Who knows how many aliases they have,” Soneri said.

  “And how many expulsion orders …” added one of the officers, his eyes still glued to the computer screen.

  “Anything found in the car?” the chief of the flying squad said.

  “A quick search didn’t reveal anything, but maybe tomorrow Nanetti will come up with something,” Soneri said, as he left with Pasquariello.

  “Do you think these two clowns have anything to do with the murder?” Pasquariello asked.

  Soneri shook his head. “I don’t believe so, but who knows? They could set us on the right track.”

  He turned away without saying goodbye. As he walked under the archway which led to the Borgo della Posta, he heard the bell on the Duomo strike one. Immediately after, the mobile in his pocket vibrated. Perhaps I won’t either, he read on the screen. He knew she meant she would not go to bed that night any more than he would. A state of agitation once again overcame him. These few words could indicate either that she had complex work in hand or that she would not be going home.

  He felt the need for some slices of Parmesan and a good, dark Lambrusco, always the best remedy at moments like these. He was about to head home but had to jump aside to avoid a squad car arriving at top speed. The car stopped in the archway, lights flashing and sirens blaring, until the officer raised the barrier. Two other cars also arriving at high speed came in behind the first.

  Soneri rushed back into the courtyard. In the absence of Parmesan and Lambrusco, throwing himself into the thick of the action could well be the best way to keep worried thoughts at bay.

  “We got him! This time we caught him with the mouse in his mouth,” shouted Esposito, hauling out a man of distinguished appearance but plainly distraught.

  Soneri watched him go past, ashen-faced, head bowed, dressed like an executive: jacket and tie, finely fashioned knee-length overcoat, English shoes, elegant trousers with flares. The commissario followed the short procession into the offices and it occurred to him that this was the night of the reckoning. He left to his colleagues the satisfaction of the first interrogation and went off to pour himself a coffee from the machine. At that instant, he felt once again refreshed. All the clamour around him seemed to him a vacuous, grotesque pantomime and for that reason, with that coolness which follows disappointment and disengagement from spent passion, he succeeded in seeing the world in a wholly new light.

  Pasquariello appeared at his side. “Why don’t you come in as well? We’re going to interrogate him.”

  The man was called Vincenzo Candiani, a professor fairly well known in the city. Soneri tried to imagine the reaction of Parma’s bien pensant society when they discovered that the Brute was not a foreigner, nor even some poor addict, but a respected professor of Law. Observing him now, seated on a plywood seat in the police station, leaning forward on his elbows like an ancient elm tree blown over by the wind, made him an almost pitiful figure. The commissario saw reflected in the man all the instability of humanity. Only the most shadowy of boundaries separated the professor revered in the lecture halls from the depraved, rapist ogre. “A nothingness,” as Sbarazza had said in support of his view that everything cohabited in every man in a turmoil continually churned up by circumstances.

  Esposito whispered into Soneri’s ear. “He was in a doorway in Borgo Scacchini, with his prick in his hand, ready for use. We were phoned by an old woman of ninety-odd years, the most alert in the building. At first we couldn’t believe it. A professor like him. Just imagine, we’ve seen him so often in court.”

  “We’re not sure of anything yet, Esposito. Human beings can take as many forms as the mist,” the commissario said.

  Esposito looked at him without seeming to understand a word. He said nothing then turned away to give orders to his men.

  “Professor, what are we to make of this?” Pasquariello began in a menacing tone.

  “I lost my head …” Candiani kept on repeating. He had opened his coat and loosened his collar because of the heat, making him look like a man who had fallen asleep fully dressed on the settee after lunch. He looked around at the policemen with a kind of candour, as though he wanted to apologise for what he had done, but did not really think he had done anything particularly serious.

  “You could have had any woman you wanted,” Pasquariello continued. “What’s going on?” he said incredulously, shaking his clasped hands back and forth.

  “I lost my head,” Candiani repeated again, but this time he added, “It was all because of one woman. It all began there …”

  It all seemed unbelievable, and yet that man seemed genuinely possessed by an obsession, a toad lurking deep in his guts. His eyes were sparkling brightly and his face seemed to be twitching like a bird’s. He was in the grip of a febrile agitation which would calm momentarily before flaring up again as he faced the questions put by Pasquariello and Musumeci. He gave every impression of having surrendered completely and even of being happy to be free of a weight, as had been the case with Medioli in that same room days earlier.

  “Have you any questions for him?” Pasquariello asked Soneri, leaving Candiani in the custody of Musumeci until the magistrate arrived.

  “Not now. I don’t know if he has anything to do with my investigations, even if Parma’s a small town and everything links up.”

  He had thought of contacting Angela to ask her about the professor, but he would not have been able to cope with a switched-off phone and the conlusions which that would have provoked. All his fears and conjectures merged into the one image of his beloved making love to that other man, with all that might be obscene or noble in lovemaking.

  He went out to light a cigar, and in the still, heavy air of the courtyard he rediscovered some peace. The whirlwind of arrest after arrest had disturbed him, causing him to feel the need to let his impressions settle and pass through the sieve of his memory. This he could do only by drawing apart a little from the throb of the action, and looking on from a distance.

  As he was going over all that had happened that night, he heard footsteps behind him. He turned and saw Juvara approach with his stumbling walk. He had a scarf round his neck and the dreamy air of someone who has overindulged.

  “You look as though you’re just out of a discotheque,” Soneri greeted him.

  “I was at a party,” the inspector said in self-justification. “There was such a racket I couldn’t hear the phone.”

  “You can go to bed. Nothing’s going to happen as regards our investigation before tomorrow morning.”

  “What’s been going on? There’s such a frenzy …”

  “They’ve picked up the rapist and it turns out he’s a well-known university professor. But what matters for us is that they’ve arrested tw
o teenagers driving the car from which Mariotto was seen dumping the body of Nina alongside the autostrada. We’re not going to find out much more until tomorrow. We’ll have to wait until Nanetti looks it over.”

  “Was it them?”

  “I doubt it. They’re just boys, and the car was stolen two months ago at Golden. That’s the most intriguing aspect.”

  Juvara nodded. “And this rapist?”

  “He says he lost his head over a woman and from then on he went haywire. Want to bet it was Nina?”

  “She was well capable of it. He obviously wouldn’t have been the first.”

  “It wasn’t her fault if men went running after her, nor if they lost their heads over her. All they wanted was to screw her, but then they got in deeper than they expected, and that’s all there was to it. Was that her fault? She was looking for a man to marry, but the ones she found wanted her as a toy. They ended up whimpering when she moved on.”

  “No, I just meant …” Juvara, stung by the commissario’s exasperated response, stuttered incoherently. Each time Nina’s name came up, a conditioned reflex provoked him into an outburst.

  “Get to bed. That’s what I’m going to do,” Soneri said, calming down. “I’ve got nothing more to do, not this evening anyway.”

  He watched the inspector turn away before he moved off himself. He wanted to be on his own, perhaps at a table in an osteria with a half litre of wine in front of him, but there was nothing open at that time. Night life was reduced to a series of squalid clubs and no-one was out after dark anymore, perhaps because it was too hard to put up with the silence.

  The silence was broken in Via Saffi by his mobile ringing, producing the same effect on the commissario as an alarm clock on someone fast asleep.

  “Are you still awake?” Angela said.

  “I’m not even home yet.”

  “Who did you go out with?”

  “Are you kidding? It was you who went out, not me.”

  “If that’s what you think, you’re off the mark. Let me warn you it doesn’t seem to me the ideal way to make a fresh start.”

  “But I never finished! I still don’t understand why you wanted to put me through all this. It’s hard to bear when your most ferocious torturer is the person you love. I don’t know what to make of you, you’re tormenting me …”

  He realised that for the first time he had let himself go, speaking out without caution or discretion, and it seemed that Angela was deeply moved by this fact. Soneri had overcome the reserve ingrained into men from the mountains where he was born. It had dissolved in the slow heat of the passions bubbling in his soul. “But perhaps you’ve finished with me,” he said, his voice breaking slightly.

  “No, that’s not the way it is,” Angela contradicted him with sudden gentleness. “I was at the prison for an interrogation until half an hour ago. I didn’t go out with anyone.”

  “But you might have done.”

  “I could have,” she said drily.

  “And it was only work that stopped you?”

  “That had a lot to do with it.” Her reply was delphic, keeping him on tenterhooks.

  Soneri could no longer put up with her frankness. He was thinking he would have preferred a merciful lie when it occurred to him that this desire for security was absurd.

  “I’m going to bed. It’s nearly three o’clock,” he said, after waiting a few seconds in vain for her to speak.

  “If it weren’t so late … Come tomorrow to my office,” Angela proposed.

  “So we’re not meeting any more in the evening?”

  She deflected the question. “I like our encounters over the lunch break. They’re less predictable.”

  “What have you got on in the evening?”

  He heard an impatient snort from the other end of the line. “Is that you off again, the interrogating policeman act?” Angela raised her voice. “You know it’s the wrong approach.”

  “What do you want me to do? Keep my mouth shut while you’re being unfaithful?”

  “Oh God, unfaithful! That’s the way people spoke half a century ago.”

  “You can use any term you like, but I prefer to speak plainly.”

  “Come round tomorrow,” Angela invited him once more, this time in a more wheedling tone of voice.

  “I’ll tell you all about Professor Candiani.”

  “What has our great academic done?”

  “He’s been raping women.”

  “Him! There were some rumours about a female student. When did you pick him up?”

  “An hour ago. In flagrante. In Borgo Scacchini.”

  “He’s an advisor to the court and a friend of a lot of lawyers.”

  “Including Paglia?”

  “I think so. They meet in an equestrian club in the hills, near Traversetolo. I believe it’s called Cerreto.”

  The mention of horses touched a chord in Soneri’s memory.

  “A police patrol unit stopped the car used to dump Nina’s body in the ditch,” he said.

  “So you’re home and dry,” Angela exclaimed.

  “Not quite dry, but we’re on the home run,” Soneri said, as Angela repeated her invitation to lunch the following day.

  14

  HE AWOKE ABRUPTLY and sat bolt upright in bed. His bedroom seemed to hold on to the darkness of the night, and he searched vaguely around until his eyes located the phosphorescence of the alarm clock. Nearly nine o’clock. He groped on his bedside table for his mobile phone, but then saw something shining on the floor. He could not remember putting his mobile on vibrate, but the pulsating movement must have caused it to fall off.

  “I’ve been looking for you since seven,” Nanetti grumbled.

  “I was up till three,” the commissario said.

  “Good sign. It means you’re coming back to life.”

  “Go to hell. I was working. They’ll have told you what happened while you were asleep or reading crime fiction.”

  “I’ve never read any such thing in all my life. I know real detectives like you … .”

  “Do you want me to tell you again to go to hell?”

  “It’d be better than being where I am now. There’s a stench in this car that would make a python throw up. They must have been using it for the delivery of take-away fryups.”

  “Oh God, the smells are getting to you now! Have you found anything worthwhile?”

  “Not so far. The fingerprints belong to the two boys, as well as to an army of other people. No trace of Nina’s, if that’s what you want to know.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “There’s a till receipt,” Nanetti said off-handedly. “I don’t think it’s got anything to do with the Romanians. They’d rather take things without going near any till.”

  “What kind of receipt is it?”

  “A computer shop, called Elettronica Sauro, in Borgo Regale.”

  “Did they spend much?”

  “No, two hundred euros. Maybe an accessory, who knows?”

  “Is there a date?”

  “Six months ago. It must have fallen and ended up under the seat. Anyway, I’ll stick it in an envelope and attach it to my report. There’s nothing else of any interest.”

  Soneri dressed hurriedly and grabbed hold of his mobile. There were seven unanswered calls. Juvara, Nanetti, Musumeci and Angela had all called, but the only one he was interested in calling back was Angela. When he was greeted by the familiar voicemail, he went into a rage which almost drove him to smash the mobile against the wall. He left the house and set off for the police station with the unpleasant feeling of not being abreast of developments.

  The first person he met was Musumeci, who looked weary but euphoric. “I’ve had compliments from Capuozzo,” he said.

  “Let me add mine,” Soneri said with a tired voice. The opinions of the chief of police were of no interest to him.

  “The newspapers have only managed to get it into ‘late news’, but you’ve no idea the uproar it’s caused!”


  “That way the good people of Parma will learn to consider themselves as living in the best of all possible worlds,” Soneri said. “What extenuating circumstances has our professor of Law given?” he asked, realising only as he asked the question just how extraordinary it was that the holder of a Chair of Law should break the law so outrageously.

  “Commissario,” the inspector began, drawing closer to Soneri with an air of complicity, “he’s up to his eyeballs in cocaine. We found some in his house, and since it was a fair amount he’s facing a charge of drug pushing as well.”

  “Who would have believed it, eh?” Soneri exclaimed sarcastically. “He said he lost his head over a woman. Did he say who she was?”

  “A Romanian woman,” Musumeci said. “He said her name is Doina, and that she dumped him without any warning, and I think I can understand why.”

  The commissario lit a cigar and as he inhaled, he saw the inspector standing silent and embarrassed before him.

  “And?”

  “These are unconfirmed stories,” Musumeci said, in an attempt to play things down. “We’ve heard from a couple of the professor’s ex-girlfriends and, you see … it seems his tastes were a bit on the perverted side, if you get my meaning.”

  “Seeing what he was up to, he could hardly be called normal, could he?”

  “Certainly not,” Musumeci said quickly. “It all fits. I just couldn’t find the right words,” he went on, his embarrassment increasing while Soneri struggled not to laugh out loud. He had frequently heard the inspector use scurrilous language when speaking to the men in his division, and here he was almost blushing in front of him. A question of rank, no doubt, but Soneri also knew that yet again age was a factor.

  “You don’t need to go into details. I can imagine them for myself.”

  He thought it was perfectly reasonable of Nina/Doina to leave him. She seemed to meet only men who wanted to keep her as a toy, or a doll, in Goretti’s words, but one so beautiful as to make grown men, seemingly sure of themselves, lose their heads.