“What?”
“You know, after the Montaltis and before the Cappellettis. What happened between ’44 and ’47?”
“I’ll go and check. Is it urgent?”
“No, no, take your time. At any rate, I’ll be here at the office until at least seven.”
“So, taking my time would mean before seven o’clock, if I’ve understood correctly. Whatever you say, then, Inspector. Your wish is my command.”
She hung up. But she was laughing. Luckily, Raffaella was a very good-natured person.
A few minutes later, the cell phone rang.
Good God, that was fast, thought Stefania.
“What’s up?”
It was Giulio.
“I’m working, naturally. Unlike you, who are always doing nothing with the excuse that you’re forever continuing your education.”
“Sooner or later you’ll have to take these same courses. But why didn’t you answer earlier today?”
“Why, did you call?”
“Twice.”
“I guess I didn’t hear the phone.”
“Any news?”
“No, unfortunately,” said Stefania, who had decided to play her cards close to her chest as far as this case was concerned. Giulio’s interest was starting to seem suspicious to her.
“I went and talked to Signora Cappelletti,” she continued, keeping to the essentials, “but she didn’t tell me anything in particular. Then I did a little research in the archives of La Provincia, but haven’t found anything of interest so far. It does turn out that Villa Regina was occupied by the Germans in 1944. They made it into a military hospital. At the moment I’m waiting for a call from Raffaella Moretto, who’s checking the archive for more details, such as what happened to the Montaltis, the family that owned the villa before the Cappellettis.”
“I don’t see what use that would be to you. I also don’t understand the point of following this lead. For now, at least, there’s no link between that dead body and these families, or the villa, or the Germans occupying Italy during the war, or anything like that.”
Stefania remained silent for a few seconds.
“Actually, I have a question for you. If I’m able to get my hands on a photograph or a negative to be printed and enlarged as much as possible, do you know whom I could ask—for quality work, that is?”
“I’ll think about that and let you know. But I believe Selvini can do that sort of thing, too. Now I have a question for you. If you pass this way in the next few days, could you drop by my office?”
Stefania had been struck by Giulio’s straightforward reasoning. What he said was true: nothing of what she’d found out so far meant anything.
Maybe the mere fact of having read news of refugees, soldiers, and wartime had played a dirty trick on her, catapulting her back into that era like an engrossing film.
But the real question was: What did Giulio have to tell her?
He was one of those people who when he talked about work never said anything out of the blue. Apparently the phone wasn’t the right place to discuss the thing he wanted to talk about.
She would have to think about this tomorrow.
Maybe she could pop over there during lunch break.
She was still lost in thought when she heard the door open behind her.
“Don’t people knock before entering in your neck of the woods?” she said in irritation. Unfortunately it wasn’t Lucchesi or Piras. It was Carboni.
The chief inspector froze in the doorway, as though surprised. Stefania looked him straight in the eye, over the tops of her glasses, and then, to change her tone, added:
“Good evening, Inspector.”
“Sorry to bother you, but it’s important.”
“No bother, go ahead.”
“To hell with preambles. The prosecutor’s office has been asking me repeatedly what point the investigation into the human remains found at the Valentini worksite is at.”
“You can confidently tell them that we know it was a Caucasian male, a young man, who did not die of natural causes. A homicide, in other words. We’ve reconstructed the cause of death and identified a few objects found with the mortal remains. We’ve collected some information on the cottage where the body was found and have spoken with the current owners. That’s all for now. But you already knew all this, I imagine.”
“Yes, and what I’m asking you now is whether you have any concrete hypothesis as to the identity of the victim, the motive of the killing, and the time period. Anything at all.”
“No, nothing so far.”
Carboni sat down. He took off his thick, magnifying eyeglasses and rubbed his eyes. He was visibly tired.
“Listen, Valenti, we’ve been working together for years now—me, you, the boys. I know how you work, and I don’t want you to think I don’t appreciate what you’re doing. But we need something right away, if we don’t want this case shelved. We need clues, evidence, facts. We have to report to Arisi with something specific, to give the impression that the investigation is going somewhere. That is, going in a specific direction, with a specific goal in mind. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly.”
Carboni stood up and started to leave. Then, with his hand on the doorknob, he turned around and made a gesture as if to say “I mean it.”
Stefania came to her usual conclusion: he was a good man.
“Thank you, Inspector.”
She went back to the window and lit another cigarette. She’d been smoking more than usual of late. And deep down she couldn’t really blame Carboni. In his shoes, and fulfilling the same function as he, she would probably have acted the same way.
Okay, but what would she do now?
She glanced at her watch. Raffaella hadn’t called back yet, but that didn’t matter. She would see her again the following morning. As for Giulio, she was certain that he would ring sooner or later.
She thought of Luca Valli.
It was time to go home.
She’d ended up staying quite late again.
Sighing, she wearily climbed the stairs to her apartment. Martina had already left an hour earlier after texting her a message on her cell phone.
Dinner OK. Camilla watching dvd. Laundry to dry. Pizza in the mw.
Stefania wondered whether she would have the time the following day to leave work at four, pick Camilla up at school, take her home, and wait for Martina. She thought of her mother, who had taken care of her granddaughter many years earlier. Maybe Guido would take care of things. It wasn’t as if he lived a hundred miles away.
She would take care of it tomorrow.
She went immediately into the little girl’s bedroom. Camilla was sleeping in front of Winnie the Pooh jumping around in the Hundred Acre Wood. She turned off the DVD player and tucked in her covers, then stood there watching her sleep for a moment. She was beautiful, with her long eyelashes and apple-colored cheeks.
My little girl, she thought.
The pizza in the microwave was hard and cold. She opted for the meringue, hot and melting on her plate. She was scooping up the blackberries floating in cream when her cell phone rang.
“Leave the photo with Selvini’s secretary. If you have the negative, that’s even better.”
“Excuse me?”
“The photo you mentioned to me. Wake up, Stefania, Selvini! The guy you used last time? He’ll see to passing it on to the photography department. Got that?”
It was Giulio, and it was almost eleven. Efficient at all hours, day or night. She could call him at three o’clock in the morning, and he would still answer calmly and rationally. And he would be able to get to the police station in half an hour dressed in coat and tie.
“Tell me, Giulio, do you sleep in your coat and tie?”
“What are you talking about?”
&nbs
p; “Nothing, it was just in a manner of speaking.”
“Are you okay? What were you doing?”
“I was just fishing some blackberries out of a puddle of cream.”
“Sounds like fun. Maybe you need to get some sleep, Stefania.”
“I do. Good night.”
“Call me if you need anything. And be sure to drop by my office tomorrow.”
“Yes, I’ll see if I can. Bye.”
Before going to bed it occurred to her that if Giulio was so insistent about this, there must be a good reason for it.
She turned off the light and fell asleep.
9
Consulting the old editions on microfilm was very easy: one button for going forward, another for going back, one for enlarging, and another for reducing. The pages slid by two at a time before Stefania’s eyes, making an even hum.
1944: Essential foodstuffs grow scarce; people turn to the black market; cross-border smuggling; more than six hundred reports filed by Swiss customs agents in the first ten months of 1944; escapes across the border, dozens of people arrested, many of them Jews; photograph of the outside of the former Lamberti dye works, now functioning as a “gathering” center; barracks of German soldiers at Cernobbio, SS command center.
Stefania paused a moment to look at the photos outside the barracks’ entrance, which showed groups of people being escorted by German soldiers. They walked in silence, lined up, luggage in hand. She gave the order to print and moved on.
Strikes in the factories: the Comense and Castagna dye works in Como, the Burgo paper mills in Maslianico. Some strikers arrested. Number of draft resisters grows.
Partisan resistance groups were forming in the mountains around Lecco and Como. This could be gathered even by reading between the lines of the many articles about “deserters,” “spies,” and “brigands.” Attacks on military convoys and barracks. Favored objectives: munitions depots, through swift acts of sabotage.
Stefania noted with some curiosity how, over time, the meshes of the censors—normally very careful not to let through any mention of common criminality (on the strict orders of the Duce’s own secretariat)—had gradually expanded.
She started reading more carefully, because by now almost every edition reported on activities in the mountains, despite the hypocrisy of the writers of such articles, who never mentioned the word partisans. She enlarged the images in order to read the names of the places where the clashes had taken place.
Proclamation of General Alexander, October 18, 1944: Dragnet to be performed in the Pizzo d’Erna area above Lecco.
She was so engrossed in her reading that she didn’t hear Raffaella come in.
“Find anything? I didn’t call you back yesterday because I didn’t find anything in particular. There was another packet of photos of the house that the owners had discarded, and so we couldn’t use them for the article. I’ll put them here—I took everything back out for you.”
“This tiny print is making my eyes fall out. Have you by any chance found the original photo of Villa Regina, the one from 1944?” asked Stefania.
“They made a copy for me, I’ll bring it to you later. Blind detectives, though, should be whisked into retirement! Want a cup of coffee? Salvatore’s just back from Salerno with an Easter cake that’s out of this world.”
“All right, that way I’ll take the photo and look at the rest.”
She didn’t mind taking a break. She had trouble looking closely at things for long stretches of time. Which, translated, meant a terrific headache after two hours in front of a computer screen. As they were drinking the coffee, she carefully examined all the contents of the folder.
“Want another slice? That way you can take some to Camilla.”
“Thanks, if there’s any left. Here, have a look at this.”
“A little courtyard with little columns, in a state of abandon. So, what about it?”
“I saw it when I was at the villa. You’re right, it looks abandoned. Look at the hedge around the fountain. It’s quite incredible how things change in appearance depending on the moment you see them and your point of view.”
“Meaning?”
“Last week, when I was looking at that hedge from inside the house, I thought I could still make out the design of the pruning through the branches that had since grown wild: a sort of motif of wedge shapes that looked familiar but which I was unable at that moment to associate with anything. This morning, when thumbing through your newspaper, I saw many of these same shapes again. They’re stars, Raffaella, interwoven Stars of David.”
“So, Jews, in other words?”
“Exactly, but we should also verify. At any rate, however, the iron gate Regina Montalti had built in 1924 also has a subtle frieze of the same motif. It’s hard to spot it because it’s lost in the rest of the decoration, which is as detailed as lace. When I think of all the times I’ve passed in front of that gate . . .”
“And so?”
“And so nothing. I was simply thinking about the fact that there are often things right before our eyes that we don’t see. Or rather, we see them without understanding them. Yesterday, for example, I read an article I found in the news ten times, but only now have I become aware of a certain detail.”
“What article?”
“A March 1944 article. At that moment Villa Regina was in German hands, and they turned it into a sort of clinic. But there’s already no trace of the former owners. Not a word is mentioned about them. It’s as if they’d vanished into thin air. And, wouldn’t you know it, it turns out they were probably Jewish. In the proofs of your article you wrote that in ’44 the villa became the property of Remo Cappelletti. As you mentioned to me, the family revised your article before it was published. There is no longer any mention of this acquisition in the final version.”
“Maybe they bought it for themselves as a Christmas present, who knows? Though I can understand why they might not want that side of things to be known, if it involved Jews. Many years have passed since the end of the war, but not a hundred. There might still be someone around who remembers.”
“Or else, more simply, there was something they wanted to keep hidden. Because it does involve a rather strange transfer of property, you have to admit. But I’m going to get back to work, otherwise I’ll be here till nightfall again.”
She grabbed the envelope with the photo and went back upstairs to the archive. Eyes burning and refusing to focus on the smaller print, she got back to work.
Offensive graffiti and gunshots fired at the Casa del Fascio and the barracks of the Guardia Nazionale Repubblicana. Roundups and reprisals.
She was reminded of certain clips from films and documentaries on the Resistance, with the image of partisans wearing a sign saying BRIGAND around their necks as they hung from the scaffold, barefoot, with the swollen faces of men subjected to torture after arrest.
December 1944: Acts of sabotage at Pian dei Resinelli, in Valsassina, and at Mandello and Bellano, in the Grigne. Guerrilla fighting engulfs the Lariano triangle: Canzo, Sormano, Erba, Monte Palanzone.
The lake’s western shore had likewise become a theater of civil war: the news from Gera Lario, Menaggio, and the Val d’Intelvi was unequivocal in this regard.
January 21, 1945: A company of Black Brigades surprises six sleeping young partisans at Cima di Porlezza: shot on site. A few days later, a partisan detachment falls into an ambush on Monte Bisbino. All members of the group killed at the Murelli.
Now she was going very slowly, in part because she was tired, in part because of her eyes. She had the distinct feeling that something was about to happen, there, at that moment, in her mountains. Any day now, at any moment, like a fire set to the autumn brush that spreads inexorably, one meter at a time, until it gets so close you can feel the heat. By this point it was clear that the partisan struggle was well organized even the
re, in that winter of ’44–’45, and every day was a good day for fighting. And dying. On both sides. On the right side and the wrong side. Assuming you can talk about the wrong side when talking about twenty-year-old boys.
It’s unjust to die young, thought Stefania, no matter which side of the barricade you’re on.
She kept sending print commands for all the pages that had anything to do with those mountains, “her” shore of the lake, if only to avoid the risk of missing something, considering that by now she could barely read anymore. She stopped to examine a few images showing a column of German soldiers on the move: a small number of officers, only light weaponry, a few vans, a sidecar, an open truck behind them. Other soldiers aboard the truck, perhaps wounded, sitting with their backs against the side bars, and behind them, an ambulance with a red cross. The road, at first glance, had looked to her like a lake road. Now she recognized it: it was the old Regina road. Stefania could not be mistaken; she knew every inch of it. Two curves past the villa, in the direction of Ossuccio. She pressed the print command without stopping to read.
Her cell phone vibrated, but she knew it was only the alarm. It was three o’clock—time, that is, to pull up her tent, gather her papers, and leave, because Camilla would be coming out at four and there was nobody else but her to pick her up. Guido was an excellent father, but that day he could do nothing.
Five more minutes, she thought.
She tried to speed things up, but there were so many headlines to read; she couldn’t very well limit herself to reading only the main ones, since what she was looking for might easily be tucked away in a side article on local crime. Her attention was drawn to a series of photographs showing some places she was able to recognize by some familiar detail or other: the crest of a mountain, the profile of a bell tower, a view of a lake. Filing past her eyes were the mountains of Grona, the old military grating, the Lago di Piano, the Dente della Vecchia, the cliffs of Val Rezzo.
Deserters captured and shot just outside the Swiss border. Gunfights between National Guardsmen and bands of guerrillas along the border.
Shadows on the Lake Page 11