“We’ll have to pay a visit to the Signora,” she said finally.
“It won’t be easy to find anything at this late stage, but it’s worth a try.”
His next call was to Juvara. “Get in touch with Musumeci. Organise a search at Golden. Maybe Martini will move from being a plaster-cast saint to a she-devil.”
“What are we looking for there?”
“They’ll have got rid of anything compromising. Get hold of balance sheets, order forms, movements into and out of the warehouse, and pay special attention to deliveries to the various curias.”
Juvara tried to say something, but Soneri cut him off. “See if you can find a member of staff who’s willing to speak. There might be an employee who’s got a grudge against Martini, somebody who got sacked. Talk to the trade union. With a temperament like hers, she must have made a fair number of enemies.”
All of a sudden he felt tired and a little afraid. He would have liked to stop and end the investigation there because he feared he had not yet got to the bottom of it. Every probe took him one more step further down.
He drove aimlessly around the city streets without knowing where he wanted to go, but when he was advised that the search was already under way he made for Lemignano. He avoided Signora Martini, fuming with rage inside Musumeci’s car together with her daughter, who was just back from her honeymoon and was in all probability, after the clamour of recent days, facing an early divorce. It was unlikely in the extreme that the Dall’Argine dynasty would tolerate their new daughter-in-law figuring so prominently in such a scandal.
He went into the now familiar office and found Juvara standing under the portrait of the Pope. The inspector was examining the sacred vessels one by one. Soneri joined him, and when he saw him pick up a chalice, he smiled contentedly.
“Commissario, I noticed this one because it seemed so out of place. When I took a closer look, it reminded me of something.”
“You’re improving all the time,” the commissario told him, still smiling. “I’d have started from there myself. Very often clues are so obvious that it’s easy to overlook them.”
“No, I’m being serious. This chalice reminds me of an object I saw in the office on a website featuring reproductions of stolen goods. You see the engraved image of Christ? It’s strange because it’s a clean-shaven Christ, whereas normally he has long hair and a beard.”
Soneri turned serious. “Where was it stolen from?”
“From the parish church at Pedrignano.”
“Is there a parish priest there still?”
“No, but an aunt of mine who lives nearby says that the priest from Sorbolo goes there to say mass.”
“Bring the chalice. We’ll go now.”
They drove again through the mist, with Juvara clutching his seat belt, scared out of his wits by Soneri’s carefree driving and by all the plane trees looming suddenly and menacingly out of the mist.
The parish priest, Don Mario Baldini, was having dinner, and the housekeeper was taken aback when the two men told her they were police officers. The priest himself, a napkin still tucked into his collar, came to the kitchen door.
“We’ve got something for you,” Soneri said, handing him the chalice.
Don Mario took it in his hand with respectful delicacy, walked over to a sideboard and put on his glasses to examine the object. After a very few moments examining it, he said: “It’s the one that was stolen.”
The commissario and Juvara let out a sigh of relief. A priest had just handed down a sentence on the Martinis, mother and daughter. Perhaps the prison chaplain would give them absolution.
*
On his return, Soneri called Marcotti and told her about the chalice and its identification.
“See if you can get in touch with Musumeci,” he suggested. “He can carry out the arrests.”
“This story’s got everything, hasn’t it? The only thing missing was a chalice used for holy Mass but manufactured in mortal sin,” the magistrate chortled.
“For once I’m going to take Capuozzo’s advice. I’m going no further with this case.”
“We’ll have to see about that, Commissario. Don’t forget that I’m the one who makes the decisions on investigations.”
Soneri drove Juvara back to the office, and decided he had done enough for the day. Hunger was calling him to the wine bar. Bruno laid out a mixed plate of torta fritta, spalla cotta, coppa and prosciutto, together with shavings of Parmesan and a bottle of Bonarda. This was his psycho-medicine of choice, and he was confident he would feel a new man after downing such delicacies. When his feelings of euphoria were at their height and the wine had quite gone to his head, his mobile rang.
“Commissario …”
“Angela!”
The tone of both voices was already reconciliation enough.
“If you’re calling to give me bad news, you couldn’t have chosen a better moment. I’ve still got half a bottle of Bonarda on the table in front of me …” Soneri babbled.
“I can’t say if it’s good or bad news, but I was wondering if you’d like to come round.”
The commissario hesitated.
“Assuming you’ve no other commitments, work or whatever …” Angela went on.
“You can’t be serious.”
“No, never more serious. But you’d be fully entitled to …”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
He left half his meal on the table and ran out. Bruno, unaware of what was happening, shouted after him: “Man labours for food, but if man doesn’t eat …” But Soneri was well on his way and did not hear him.
*
Once they were face to face, they gazed at each other intensely. Neither knew where to start, both deeply embarrassed, Angela restrained by a sense of guilt and Soneri by a feeling of insecurity. The relationship they hoped to rekindle appeared to both of them fragile, and each feared rupturing it with an ill-judged word or move. As often happened between them, they communicated by looks while their rambling words served to ease tension.
“You’ve done brilliantly,” Angela said.
The commissario picked up in her tone of voice something more than a compliment. They were indirectly exchanging words of love, while pretending to speak of other things.
“The poor girl!” Soneri said. “All she wanted was to enjoy life like anyone else. She wanted a partner to spend her life with, but all she found were wealthy men on the prowl.”
Angela looked at him affectionately and tenderly. “Are you sure that’s the way it was?” she asked, laughing warmly as she spoke. “If there’s one thing I like about you and have never found in any other man, it’s that you manage to combine the naivety of a boy with the cynical pessimism of an old man.”
“Everyone has their contradictions.”
She shook her head. “That’s not the point. You see the vilest aspects of this world and you accept them with pragmatic resignation, but you never give up thinking like a dreamer. Or a child. In spite of everything, there is a spring of hope in you. It’s this quality that makes me love you.”
Soneri was thoroughly confused. Angela had left him naked to the point where he had no idea what to say. He felt defenceless but happy to be so in front of this woman who, he now felt sure, was deeply attached to him.
“And that’s why you’re so wrong about Iliescu,” Angela said.
He might have succeeded in finding the culprits, but he had not understood anything. He felt inept. His partner’s words were both wounding and confusing.
“Are you determined to extinguish the hope that remains in me?”
“No. I’ve just said it’s the thing I most admire in you. But that girl really was a pernicious person.”
“How do you know?”
“You won’t lose your temper if I tell you?”
The commissario shook his head.
“The other man, the one …”
“I understand.”
“Well, he’s defending Cand
iani …”
“… who can now say anything he likes.”
“No, there’s only one version. The other man knows all about the cocaine deals.”
“And what does all this have to do with Nina?”
“Quite a lot,” Angela assured him. “The other man convinced Candiani to come clean, and in a couple of days he’s going to hand over a memorandum to his defence team in which he’ll detail all the various moves in the cocaine trade. Nina was more than a pawn.”
Everything was falling apart around Soneri. His reality was evaporating into the mists.
“She worked for Aimi, and the Cerreto club was one of the distribution centres for ‘snow’ in Parma. She even had an account which was used to transfer the money raised by the drug deals. She took a percentage on the quantities ordered and she got a cut on any new clients she recruited.”
Soneri turned a quizzical look on her, while the outlines of the affair shifted yet again, sinking to ever lower depths.
“Franco, it’s the truth!” she smiled. “Iliescu was no more than a whore – a high-class whore, if you like, but a whore nevertheless. Her role was to seduce men who had money to burn. Or bored, empty-minded people searching for excitement. She had a real gift for that. Once she’d ensnared them, she talked them into taking a little of the stuff until she made them users. And you thought she was a victim?”
“She was. After all, she was murdered,” Soneri insisted.
“She went too far. The Romas saw her as a traitor because she bowed out of the gold deals. They probably threatened her, and she thought she was in a stronger position than she actually was. She most likely threatened to blow the whistle, and so the Romas, Soncini and his wife decided to do away with her. But even with Aimi, according to Candiani, she carried on raising the stakes. She was pretty, she had them all at her feet, but there was no satisfying her. Greed is so often a factor.”
“All this could well stand up, but what about the baby?” Soneri objected, thinking of his dead wife and his own sorrows. These were matters which had perhaps confused him all throughout the investigation.
“You have no idea what some women are like. Passion can go hand in hand with cynicism and calculation with emotion. Just possibly Iliescu really was in love with Soncini, maybe she did want to have that baby. She wanted the lot, but when you no longer experience hunger, you risk contracting indigestion. She wanted money and a comfortable life as well as a man and children. She never had time to bring all her hopes together and put them in order. She wanted them all, right away, in one go.”
“I could go along with that as an investigator, but I’m still a very poor psychologist.”
“That’s not the point,” Angela said. “It’s that you are a better person than the people you have to deal with. And I’m not just talking about down-and-out criminals, but about the wealthy middle class of this city. That’s where you find real criminals.”
“You’re speaking like a woman in love.” Soneri tried to make light of the situation, but Angela took him seriously and nodded.
“Yes, I am,” she said.
They embraced with raw urgency, like two old comrades-in-arms.
“I had given you up for lost, but now you’re back,” Soneri whispered. “I don’t know how this has happened.”
“I needed time to reflect. I knew I was hurting you badly, because I know you love me, but there were a lot of things going on. Let’s say it’s all down to Providence,” Angela said with a touch of irony.
“You’re not the first person to be lecturing me about that. I’ve been stumbling over it for some time now.”
“We all trip over it. We try to make plans, but often something turns up that blows us off course, like scraps of paper in the wind.”
“And what blew you off course?”
“Life with you was too routine, that was the first thing. Then the other man came along and made me feel desired once again.”
“You liked him, that’s all there was to it. And perhaps you still do.”
Angela did not deny it. “I never considered leaving you. Maybe if it had all worked out with the other man, I’d have had to choose. But, I don’t know how to say this …”
“In what way did it not work out? Tell me who I have to thank?”
“Chance, providence,” Angela said with a laugh. “A couple of days ago I bumped into a colleague I hadn’t seen for ages. It just so happened that both of us were due to have trials before different courts, but both trials collapsed. What sort of coincidence was that? We found ourselves having a coffee in the same bar. In the course of the conversation, gossiping about mutual friends, the talk turned to the other man. She didn’t know what had been going on between me and him, but she let slip that last month he had been courting her insistently. In other words, he was trying it on with both of us at the same time.”
“So I should send a bouquet to your colleague.”
“Maybe it would all have ended in any case,” Angela said, without much conviction.
“I doubt it. You were fond of him, and if he hadn’t slipped up, which you found out about by pure chance, you’d be with him still and you’d have left me,” Soneri groaned.
“At some stage, I’d have had to make up my mind.”
“You’d have chosen him. He excited you, you were elated.”
“He made me feel important.”
Soneri fell silent. He was gripped by anxiety over what might have been. “You had effectively left me. You were about to tell me so when something made you turn back. I was already an ex.”
“But now we’re here,” she said.
“By pure chance.”
“We are light, unbearably light, made of nothing. We can only seize the moment, but we can’t claim there is any continuity in what we are, nor can we make plans that are anything more than vague desires. In a flash something can change the unstable formula of our attachments. It’s an infinite round of waltz steps. Life produces saints and killers, monks and pimps, thieves and honest men.”
“Now it has produced the two of us, and has allowed us once more to walk a little way together. It’s no good thinking too far ahead,” Angela said.
“Alright. Let’s take full advantage of this opportunity your other man has offered us,” Soneri said, taking out his mobile to call the investigating magistrate.
“Dottoressa, do you have a moment? It appears to be the case that Nina was a link in a chain for the distribution of cocaine, centred on the Cerreto club. In the next couple of days, you’ll have in your hands a memorandum written by Candiani for his defence. That Aimi needs more attention as well.”
As they spoke he could hear in her voice annoyance and disappointment over that human betrayal of his. “But, forgive me, why are you telling me this? I entrusted the case to you.”
“We’re talking about drugs now, something for the narcotics squad to look into. For the rest, no need to look any further than Musumeci, who took care of Candiani.”
“Look here, and I’m saying this for your sake, it seems they want to take the case out of your hands. I don’t get it,” she said.
“Capuozzo was right. It’s as well to stop at a certain point. I have no desire to sink any deeper into this shit.”
VALERIO VARESI is a journalist with La Repubblica. Gold, Frankincense and Dust is the third in a series of thrillers featuring Commissario Soneri, now the protagonist of one of Italy’s most popular television dramas. The earlier novels, River of Shadows and The Dark Valley, were both shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association International Dagger.
JOSEPH FARRELL is professor of Italian at the University of Strathclyde. He is the distinguished translator of novels by Leonardo Sciascia and Vincenzo Consolo, and plays by the Nobel Laureate Dario Fo.
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