Glass Souls

by Maurizio de Giovanni

  “We can go together. Most likely, we won’t find out a thing, but we need to give it a shot. After all, we don’t have any other leads. Even though, out of all this information, there’s definitely something that just doesn’t add up.”

  Maione got to his feet.

  “I got the same feeling, Commissa’. Otherwise, I’d have already suggested we just drop the matter. You know what I’m going to do right now? I’ll take a run down to see if there’s a car available, at least the Fiat 501.”

  Ricciardi immediately regretted having opened his mouth; if there was one thing that terrified him, it was going anywhere in a car with Maione, who was, to be charitable, a terrible driver. But it was too late: the brigadier had already left the room. The only hope he could still cling to was that the car might be out on duty.

  Almost immediately, there came a light tapping at the office door; he heaved a sigh of relief and went to open the door, already mentally preparing to head out to the convent by public transportation. Instead, he found himself face to face with Bianca di Roccaspina.

  The woman’s face was devastated with tears and sorrow. Ricciardi shot a quick glance down the hallway, making sure that no one had seen them, and then ushered her in.

  “Contessa, what’s going on? We’d made it very clear that it was best you not come here anymore.”

  Bianca stared at him with reddened eyes and trembling lips; she seemed on the verge of giving into her emotions.

  “Forgive me, Commissario. I . . . I just don’t know where to go. I didn’t want to go home in this state, people, you know . . . All I have left is my dignity. It’s the only thing left to me.”

  Ricciardi felt his heart twist.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Tell me, has something happened?”

  Bianca sighed. She seemed younger than usual, but also wearier.

  “I’ve been at the prison. I wanted to . . . Attilio had warned me . . . He’d told me that Romualdo didn’t want to see me, and for that matter I wasn’t especially keen on seeing him. But, you understand, I wanted to tell him . . . I thought it was only right to tell him that it’s over between us. That I don’t love him anymore and that even if this whole affair ended with his freedom, I won’t stay with him for so much as another minute. Do you understand me, Commissario? I had to tell him.”

  Ricciardi felt a surge of pity. For that woman, for the man that he’d seen in prison, and, the reason being some mysterious motive that remained hidden beneath the surface of his consciousness, for himself.

  “Contessa, why are you telling me these things? I . . . ”

  The woman went on as if he hadn’t spoken.

  “And when I saw him I was frozen to the spot. He’s a phantom: prostrate, devastated. There’s no trace in him of the man I once knew. It frightened me.”

  The commissario remembered the count’s eyes, sunken in their sockets, and nodded.

  On Bianca’s face, the tears were streaming freely.

  “That voice, Commissario. That voice. It seemed as if another soul had taken possession of his body and were devouring it from within. How can that be, how is it possible to live with a person for years and never really know who they are? Tell me how it can be, I beg you.”

  She’s overwhelmed, thought Ricciardi. Terrorized, bewildered, and overwhelmed. Alone, abandoned, poor, and what’s more, a victim of her own dignity. In his mind, the image of Bianca was overlaid upon that of Livia, she too the victim of desperation, lovely and tortured, her makeup streaking her face; and that of Enrica, by the sea, one hand clamped on her hat, her eyeglasses fogged with tears.

  God, thought Ricciardi, what a crime You committed when You invented love.

  “I’d have rather sensed hatred, believe me. I’d have rather seen that in his eyes, instead of a mocking contempt, an icy indifference. I had never seen that indifference before. And the worst thing is that in my heart I felt the same thing; until today, I’d never confessed it even to myself. What can I do, now? What can I do?”

  She stared at him, her lips compressed and her hands clutching the handle of her purse, her shoulders rigid to maintain a certain shred of dignity. She was staring at him as if he could answer her.

  But Ricciardi, the man with a head full of wind and sand, the man whose soul of glass could so easily be shattered into a thousand bits, had no answers for her. He had none for himself, much less for others.

  “Contessa, please. Relationships are born, they age, and they die, just like people. I don’t know what to tell you, because my life . . . I don’t know what to tell you. But I will make you a promise, I’ll do everything within my power to provide an explanation of what’s happened. The only thing is, I beg you, don’t suffer like this. You’re a young woman, you have every chance at . . . ”

  Bianca raised her hand.

  “I’m begging you, Commissario. Today, here, at this very instant, I feel as if there is no future for me. And I’m more alone than I’ve ever been before. I don’t even know if I have a soul anymore.”

  At that point, Ricciardi felt weighing down on his shoulders all the weariness of the sleepless nights, the everyday absence of Rosa, the terrible solitude of his life, Livia’s rage, the distance he had read in Enrica’s eyes. Absurdly, in the fog of his numb grief, he found himself wondering once again what all that sea was good for.

  And as in a dream, against his shy, retiring nature, and in defiance of all reason, he reached out his hand and placed it upon Bianca’s tearstained cheek.

  Her flesh was silk-smooth and burning hot, full of life and bewilderment. She lifted her black-gloved hand and rested it on the commissario’s hand, as if to keep it there. Bianca needed to feel she was still alive; and Ricciardi needed to feel he was still alive, too.

  They remained like that for a few seconds, her violet eyes in his green ones, she teetering on the brink of the other’s abyss of solitude, in a profound and self-aware contact, as if the two of them were a single thing.

  The magic was interrupted by a couple of sharp taps at the door. They broke apart just as Maione came in with a broad smile on his face.

  “Oh, buonasera, Contessa.” He observed the woman for a moment, then decided that he had better not ask any questions and instead addressed his superior officer. “We’re in luck, Commissa’: the car is in the courtyard. Amitrano says that no one was interested in taking it out because the brakes aren’t working right. I told him that I’d take it out for a test spin, that way we don’t have to explain to anyone why we’re taking it—did I do right? Let’s go, if we move quickly we can get back before the end of our shift!”

  XLIII

  Not even half an hour later, Ricciardi stepped out of the car in the courtyard of the Convent of the Madonna Incoronata with a faint sense of bewilderment: he couldn’t even begin to guess how and why it was that he was still alive.

  Maione’s driving, he knew, was already lethal per se, but combined with the wear and tear on the brakes of the ramshackle vehicle available for the use of the mobile squad, a thirteen-year-old Fiat 501, the likelihood of dying on the way over had spiked to a virtual certainty.

  Along the way, they had overturned two vendors’ carts, had a close brush with a motorcycle sidecar, knocking it with the front fender, and brushed into the roadside ditch at least three cyclists. The pedestrians, more agile and alert, had managed to take to their heels, but a hen hadn’t been so lucky and had perished under the front left wheel, amidst the shouts and curses of the fowl’s owner, whom Ricciardi had seen shaking her fist until they vanished around the next curve. And in all this, the brigadier didn’t appear to notice a thing, his eyes fixed on the roadway ahead of him and the tip of his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth, in full and absolute concentration. He turned the wheel jerkily, without any relationship to the roadway or the potholes, which were increasingly numerous as they ventured farther out into the count
ryside. Ricciardi hung on tight to the handles with both hands and yet, in spite of that, had knocked his head against the roof so many times that he finally had a fiercely throbbing migraine, as well as an intolerable sense of nausea. When the self-taught driver triumphally screeched to a halt with a terrible shriek of metal against metal in the convent’s courtyard, the commissario catapulted himself out of the car, resisting the temptation to kiss the ground like a sixteenth-century navigator.

  Maione, smiling, pulled out his pocket watch.

  “Twenty-two minutes, Commissa’. There’s nothing you can say about it, I’m the best driver at police headquarters. When I took the driving class I was the best, and I’m still the best now.”

  Ricciardi replied weakly.

  “Remind me to talk to the instructor, if we ever get back alive.”

  The theatrical arrival had at least obtained an effect. Ten nuns and young women wearing uniforms marking them as convent personnel peeped shyly out the front entrance, after first having taken hasty shelter inside.

  The brigadier identified himself and asked to be received along with Ricciardi by the mother superior.

  A nun who was studying them with great mistrust led them through a maze of hallways and staircases until she reached a dark wooden door, where she knocked. A woman’s voice, energetic and brisk, invited them to enter.

  The mother superior was a short, overweight woman, with a pink complexion and lively blue eyes; she sat behind an enormous desk piled high with papers. When she saw the two men, she stood up to greet them.

  “I am Sister Caterina,” she said.

  Ricciardi and Maione took turns introducing themselves, then the commissario said: “Mother Superior, forgive us for coming unannounced. We are undertaking a supplementary investigation concerning the murder of the lawyer Ludovico Piro, which took place this past June. Our research is going to contribute to the first stages of the trial. Would you be kind enough to answer a few questions for us?”

  The woman’s eyes darted for an instant, followed by a smile.

  “Why, of course, if it’s within our power, we’ll do whatever we can to help. Sister Carla, you can go back to your service, thank you.”

  The nun who had accompanied them shot a final dark glare at the policemen and left without saying goodbye. Sister Caterina took her seat again behind the desk.

  “I apologize for the behavior of my fellow sister; we don’t get a lot of outside visitors. Now then, poor Ludovico. A grim story, very grim indeed. I won’t conceal from you that we have been very concerned: the Mother General of the Order has written us many times to get more information about the accounts. Luckily, though, Piro was a very precise person, and we have been able to reconstruct our financial situation to a very complete degree. Certainly, now we are going to have to find another administrator, the lawyer had been working for us for a very long time; as you can see from the disorder, I’ve been trying to look after it myself, but I’m afraid I’m not particularly good at it.”

  Ricciardi got straight to the point.

  “We understand, and we have to imagine that the same thing is happening in all the institutions that the lawyer handled. We have learned that he was here the day before he died. Can you confirm that?”

  Sister Caterina never stopped smiling.

  “Certainly. In fact, I was somewhat astonished when no one came to ask me about Ludovico’s visit. I imagine that’s because the murderer, may the Good Lord forgive him, was immediately caught.”

  “Do you mind if I ask why he had come?”

  The mother superior shuffled through the papers on the desk with her pudgy hands.

  “Of course, I was just looking at the statements now.” She opened a large notebook. “Here, he brought us this that day, along with other documents; it allowed us to have an updated starting figure upon which to work. Bank deposits, real estate . . . Let me say it again, Piro was very scrupulous.”

  Ricciardi took a quick look at the ledger book. In effect, everything seemed to be in good order.

  “Tell me, Mother, did you know what businesses Piro invested your cash in?”

  Sister Caterina reddened almost imperceptibly, but her expression didn’t change.

  “Not really, but that’s only natural. Piro was our fiduciary agent, and therefore, as the term suggests, we trusted him.”

  Maione heaved a sigh of irritation, masking behind a burst of coughing a hint of annoyance. He couldn’t stand hypocrisy.

  “But excuse me, Mother, do you remember any unusual details about that visit?”

  The nun shook her head seraphically.

  “No, nothing. Piro stayed for about an hour, he ran through the numbers with me, illustrated the financial transactions of the months to come, which unfortunately he was never to undertake, and then he left.”

  Ricciardi nodded pensively.

  “But how did he seem to you? I mean: tranquil, agitated or . . . ”

  Sister Caterina replied somewhat hastily.

  “Tranquil, absolutely tranquil. A perfectly normal visit, no different from all the others.”

  Maione asked: “And just how often did Piro come to see you, to brief you about these investments you knew nothing about?”

  The mother superior seemed to miss the irony.

  “At the end of every quarter. He was very regular.”

  “And he hadn’t left anything out, had he? The information that he provided was complete.”

  “Certainly.”

  Ricciardi exchanged a rapid glance with Maione. The time had come to deliver the knockout blow.

  “So it was strange, unusual, that he should have come back again the very next day, wasn’t it?”

  The nun was caught off guard. She clearly did not think that Piro’s second visit had come to the attention of the police.

  She reddened and dropped her eyes to the papers on the desk.

  “I don’t think I remember exactly, but I don’t think that . . . ”

  Maione interrupted her brusquely.

  “Mother Superior, we are certain that the lawyer Piro was also here on the morning of the day he was killed. We have the testimony of his chauffeur, who drove him out here. He told us that Piro didn’t stay long. Let me ask you, then, try to remember.”

  Sister Caterina showed no sign of losing her blush, but she had regained her cold composure. With her eyes trained on Maione’s face, she admitted it.

  “Yes. Now I remember. It’s true, Ludovico came back the next day.”

  Ricciardi leaned forward.

  “And you can’t tell us the reason why?”

  The woman met and held his gaze.

  “No, Commissario. I can’t tell you the reason why. It was about a personal matter, and we aren’t accustomed to revealing the business of our faithful friends. Even if they are, sadly, dead, indeed, all the more so if they are dead.”

  Ricciardi and Maione exchanged a quick glance.

  “Mother Superior, this is important information that could cast light on . . . ”

  The nun stood up.

  “I really don’t think so. Let me repeat, it was a personal matter that can’t have any connection to what happened later. And in any case, it was only a request for information.”

  Maione tried to insist.

  “But can you at least tell us whether he mentioned anyone’s name, or if . . . ”

  The nun walked over to the door with brisk, short steps and threw it open.

  “I’ve already explained to you that I cannot and I will not say anything about this matter. And I’m going to have to ask you to leave immediately, because both the convent and the school are in need of a great deal of work, and we cannot afford to waste too much time in these pointless conversations. The trial against the murderer, I feel certain, will have all the evidence required. Buonasera.”

/>   Once they were back in the car, Maione slammed his fist on the steering wheel.

  “Darn it, Commissa’, we’d almost nailed it. You saw it, first she pretended she couldn’t remember, then she was forced to admit it, but then she decided not to tell us anything. I assure you, that tea-towel head knows something, as God is my witness!”

  Ricciardi ran his eyes around the convent courtyard, where small groups of nuns and young women in navy blue uniforms were observing them curiously.

  Then he looked at Maione almost affectionately and said: “If we ever make it back alive, and I’m sure that we won’t, there are a few things I want to examine in some greater depth. I’ve suddenly had an idea.”

  XLIV

  It hardly needs saying, but Manfred’s invitation had created a genuine state of frenzy in the Colombo family. It had been expected of course, but not so quickly.

  Those Germans, when they set their sights on something, they don’t waste any time achieving it, Maria had said, and with a clear hint of satisfaction, because what the German in question had set his sights on was her daughter; but the concept possessed an unsettling military overtone that sent a shiver down Giulio’s spine.

  Enrica would have preferred to have the invitation delivered to her in a discreet manner, so that she could postpone that meeting; for more than twenty-four hours now she had spent nearly all her time shut up in her bedroom, claiming a faint malaise caused by the change in seasons and, perhaps a form of influenza caught from one of the children she tutored.

  Her father had appeared in her doorway several times, to ask her in a whisper whether there was anything she needed; like her, he was subject to migraines, and he knew just how painful they could be. That was the ostensible reason: in reality he wanted to see what his daughter’s state of mind might be. For a deductive soul like him, the condition in which she had returned from a long solitary walk the morning of the previous day made the fact that she was now so indisposed something that could only be viewed as highly suspicious.