by Tim Parks
They were sitting either side of an undistinguished desk where a rather bulky out-of-date tape-recorder on top of a pile of local newspapers had already been switched on. The room was institutional prefab, white walls and posters showing uniformed men embracing children and helping pensioners. The lighting was fluorescent.
Morris said: ‘I believe it is my right to insist on having a lawyer here with me.’
‘It is indeed, Signor Duckworth’ - the carabiniere neither smiled nor looked up from his notes - ‘under clause 223, section 2 of the codice penale you are entitled to have a lawyer present at all police interrogations. However, if you wish to call one and then arrange a time that suits both him and me, you can hardly complain about us keeping you until such an appointment is possible.’
Morris pulled a frowning face, apparently reflecting on this, whereas in fact he was merely registering how much more at home he had always felt with Marangoni There had always been an atmosphere of banter and amicable challenge with the police inspector, as if they were acting out the kind of story that couldn’t really end too badly. Here, however, the genre seemed of quite a different variety.
‘Ask away then,’ Morris said. ‘I’ve nothing to hide.’
‘If you could just begin by stating your particulars,’ the pale man asked, again without so much as looking up.
‘My name,’ Morris said resentfully, ‘is Morris Albert Duckworth, born 19/12/1960, Acton, London, Gran Bretagna, at present officially resident at Via dei Gelsomini 6, Montorio, Verona, though I am in the process of moving into my wife’s family home in Quinzano, Verona. I am not guilty of any crime and am ready to answer any reasonable questions I am asked.’
‘Grazie.’ The colonnello was silent for a moment, during which time Morris was pleased to notice two rather ugly mole formations beneath his mushroom-white left ear. Cancerous? Either way, anybody truly intelligent would have had a blemish like that removed some good long time ago, as he himself had recently had a wart burnt out of the back of his hand, at not inconsiderable pain and expense. Then he heard the man say: ‘I don’t really have any questions, Signor Duckworth. All we need is a statement of confirmation or denial of the facts as we see them: that is, the manner in which and the time at which you murdered Signor Posenato.’
Morris froze. Certainly Marangoni had never talked like this, even when things had been very sticky indeed. There was an extremely unprepossessing efficiency about the young man with the death-white complexion, moles and spectacles, and something fearfully Teutonic in his voice. He pronounced the ‘w’ in Duckworth with a strong German ‘V,’ while the ‘th’ was almost an V.
But Morris was determined not to confess till he at least knew how much they knew. He would not be thrown by a simple accusation. That was child’s play. Probably they accused everybody who walked in here of something awful just to see how they reacted. You never knew your luck. With a calm he wouldn’t have imagined possible in such circumstances, he asked: ‘You’re not from around these parts, are you?’
The carabiniere frowned at something on his desk.
‘I was trying to place the accent,’ Morris said amiably.
‘I’m from the South Tyrol,’ the colonnello said half under his breath, intent on turning a page of his notebook.
‘Ah, of course, Alto Adige. And your name?’
At last the man looked up. Morris experienced a flicker of triumph. Now he could work on him with his eyes, his big frank blue eyes.
‘Signor Duckworth, I don’t think we need . . .’
‘Oh, as you will, as you will. Just that it does seem to me to be common courtesy to let another person know who they are talking to. But of course if it’s a question of official secrecy, I. . .’
‘Fendtsteig,’ the man said evenly.
‘Ah,’ Morris smiled frankly, full of sympathy. ‘Yes, the South Tyrol. Fendtsteig. Almost as bad as Duckworth really. Don’t you find that with names like ours one can never really feel at home in Italy? There’s always a gap between us and the others.’
Instead of warming to him, the man’s colourless eyes were unmistakably gelid now. The lips, too, were pressed almost white. A sparse prickling showed he hadn’t shaved yet, perhaps had been up all night. Morris went on quickly: ‘I mean, do you ever wonder if people’s characters aren’t influenced by their names? I remember when I was younger . . .’
‘Signor Duckvorse,’ Fendtsteig cut in, and his Italian seemed to be growing more German by the minute, ‘I have no intention of having a pleasant chat with someone I believe to be a murderer. I shall now present you with the facts as we see them. You will then deny or confirm those facts, or refuse to do either as you wish, adding any extra particulars you feel should be taken into consideration. Our interview will then be over. Capito?’
‘Of course, Colonnello,’ Morris said in pantomime obedience; then just as the other was opening his mouth to read from a notebook, he put in: The fact is, I suppose, that for some of us the social graces die hard.’
But the pale man had already started to read, impervious, Morris realised, to either charm or shame; and as he read, his voice was completely flat, and as sure of itself as a recorded message.
‘On the morning of Wednesday, February 28th, you left your house at seven-thirty to proceed to work as was your normal habit.’
Morris pushed back his seat, crossed his legs, propped his right elbow on his knee and took the knuckle of a forefinger between his teeth. His brow knitted in concentration. His left hand grasped his right foot. The pose he had once assumed in university lectures.
‘During the journey your wife, Paola Trevisan-in-Duckvorse, phoned and alerted you to the fact that her mother had died. She asked you to drive immediately to your mother-in-law’s house, where you arrived at seven-fifty. You spoke to the nurse, then immediately went downstairs, saying you needed to make a phone call. You were then discovered by your sister-in-law, Antonella Trevisan-in-Posenato, searching through her mother’s belongings and spent ten minutes with her asking questions about the inheritance.’
Morris was on the point of interrupting here. Clearly words like ‘discovered’ and ‘searching’ were heavily loaded, as if he had already been doing something wrong. It wasn’t fair. It was like L’Étranger, where the poor fellow was accused of having smoked a cigarette at his mother’s wake, as though this in some way demonstrated that he was guilty of shooting the Arab. But even as Morris opened his mouth to object, he was unnerved by the reflection that actually it was outrageous for a man to smoke a cigarette at his mother’s wake. It was terrible. Certainly Morris never would. Though it was frankly unkind of the caretaker who had given him the cigarette to present it to the police so negatively. As perhaps it had been unkind of Antonella to tell the police that he had asked her about the inheritance. Unless she was simply being candid and didn’t realise that a fact like that could be used to smear his character. But now he had lost the thread of what Fendtsteig was saying.
‘I’m sorry, could you go back a bit. I lost you at the inheritance business.’
Like a tape-recorder wound back, Fendtsteig repeated in exactly the same monotone: ‘. . . asked questions about the inheritance. You then drove off to the family company’s headquarters outside Quinto, where you had an argument with your brother-in-law, Signor Posenato, with whom you have long had a difficult, not to say stormy, relationship.’
‘Stormy’, Morris thought, was far too attractive and passionate a word to describe his dull exchanges with the miserable chicken magnate, but he let it pass.
The argument of the morning in question presumably had to do with the Trevisan inheritance and a will apparently in Signor Posenato’s possession. The argument became heated, on which you fell to blows and killed him - no, please, Signor Duckvorse, can you save your comments until I have finished reading this account.’
‘My apologies,’ Morris begged, for he had rather impolitely burst out laughing. ‘I was just. . .’
Fendtsteig raised
his eyes to treat Morris to one of his rare Gestapo gazes of unblinking eyes behind cold lenses; lenses, Morris now noticed, which were not as clean as they might have been.
‘I was just thinking what a funny collocation “fell to blows” was.’
Fendtsteig looked down again. Probably the poor fellow didn’t even know what ‘collocation’ meant. Then exactly as the man began to read, Morris said: ‘Sorry, please do go on.’ Fendtsteig ignored it.
‘. . . killed him, perhaps by accident, given the kind of scuffle indicated by the disarray of the furniture and the lack of blood that a conventional weapon would have caused. But perhaps not. Perhaps that was set up. Certainly a number of items had been moved before we arrived, despite your claims to the contrary. In any event, your fingerprints were found in a very unusual position on the upturned chair, on the desktop and on various file drawers.’
What, Morris wondered, was a very unusual position for a fingerprint on a desktop? The kind that Farouk and Azedine would have left? He wouldn’t have been surprised if Bobo and his improbable Bimbetta hadn’t left a good few themselves.
Could Bobo have actually fired the immigrants because they found him!? It was becoming harder and harder to concentrate on what the carabiniere was saying.
‘You then put Signor Posenato in his own car. You drove a very short distance and hid the vehicle. Perhaps in a local garage. You then walked back to the scene of the crime and, seeing that nobody had as yet discovered it, called the police from your car phone. It was now ten o’clock. The following night, you left the house in Quinzano after your wife was already asleep, returned to the car and drove it away somewhere to dispose of the body. You then drove it back to its nearby hiding-place, got back into your own car and returned home. That is the end of our version of events. I would now like to invite you to confirm or deny them.’
Good. Morris waited.
‘Perfavore, Signor Duckvorse.’
‘Colonnello Fendtsteig, please don’t feel you have to hurry things for me. If there are one or two other crimes you’d like to accuse me of at the same time, do go ahead.’
The pale man waited, then said quietly: This is a serious matter, Signor Duckvorse. I would be grateful if you could treat it as such.’
‘Worth,’ Morris said.
Fendtsteig looked up from his notes but only to gaze past Morris through the window.
Morris sighed. For a moment he almost wished he smoked, since apart from the histrionic effect and the opportunities for playing for time, lighting a cigarette would now have given him an excellent chance to show that his hands weren’t shaking one bit. Because they had nothing on him at all! It was all pure speculation, and quite wrong for the most part. Your argument ‘presumably had to do with the Trevisan inheritance’! Indeed! Perhaps in a local garage! Perhaps! Not to mention the fact that they couldn’t have found his prints on the chair. It was impossible. Or did they think he was going to be so stupid as to say: Look, I wiped them off with a wet-wipe?
Eventually, he said: ‘Colonnello Fendtsteig, do you ever actually communicate with your colleagues in the polizia? You know? I mean, it would save a lot of time and I wouldn’t have to try to remember what I’ve already said and to whom.’
‘Signore Duckvorse, I asked you to confirm or deny what I read out to you.’
‘Because, as I explained to the polizia yesterday, Bobo fired two of our immigrant workers the night before he was killed
‘You admit, then, that he was killed?’
‘What?’ But Morris knew he had slipped up.
‘You know that he is dead?’
Morris made his eyes wide and puzzled. Speaking, he was very aware of how his tone of voice would come over on the tape-recorder. ‘Oh, I see. No, I imagined that since you were so convinced he’d been killed you must have found the body or something.’ He waited, but had begun to feel nervous again. Sometimes the ice was so desperately thin, and if he went through it he knew there’d be no coming back up. He breathed deeply, forced himself to think. There is also quite frankly the fact that these two men disappeared immediately afterwards and all the petty cash along with them. From Bobo’s office. The safe behind the fuse box.’
Fendtsteig didn’t immediately reply. He studied his notes. Morris forced himself to be patient. The man obviously cultivated this disturbing habit of avoiding all eye contact and generally refusing to engage in a properly personal conversation. The thing was, Morris thought, to treat it as the pathetic ruse it was and not to be thrown by it.
‘Naturally,’ Fendtsteig finally remarked, turning a page, ‘naturally the police informed us of all this. But we are not impressed. The two men were seen leaving the area of Villa Caritas at five in the morning, whereas Signor Posenato spoke to a number of workers arriving for the morning shift at seven. So he was still alive then. As for the petty cash, we have only your word for it.’
It was intriguing, though, Morris thought, that the police hadn’t yet told their colleagues that Bobo had called them at nine. Should he? For a moment he hesitated, then suddenly felt impatient again. Enough was enough. It was time to put an end to this charade and get on home for breakfast. He said: ‘Colonnello Fendtsteig, I, Morris Duckworth, categorically deny killing my brother-in-law, Roberto Posenato. I deny being on bad terms with him. On the contrary, we had an excellent business relationship. Over the last few months we have turned the business round and we were extremely pleased with ourselves. I deny going straight from my mother-in-law’s house to the company. I stopped in the bar in the piazza in Quinzano, and then went to what we call Villa Caritas, some way beyond Quinto, where I spoke for some time to one of the immigrants, a certain Kwame, before going on to the company. I categorically deny being engaged last night in anything but my own very private business.’
And that, Morris thought, or at least until they did a little more homework, should be that.
The colonnello left another long pause. Again he consulted his notes, leafing through pink-lined pages. To Morris’s left, the window was suddenly less black and glossy. A first filtering of winter light found the profile of a car, the outline of a low building beyond. And something of the institutional squalor of it came home to him: grey lines in grey light, the sort of rectangles and compounds they would be trying to trap him in for ever now. Suddenly he felt deeply afraid. For what he wanted was to be free. Free to drive through the countryside, to help the immigrants, to look at art, to make love to his wife, to bring up his child. Were they unreasonable ambitions? Under his breath, he whispered: ‘Mimi!’
‘Mi scusi? You wanted to say something?’
‘No,’ Morris said.
Fendtsteig ran a tooth over a thin lower lip. ‘First: we have no confirmation that you went to the bar in Quinzano. Nobody remembers you going in there that morning. Second: the witness who is supposed to have talked to you at Villa Caritas was not convincing. He was unable to say how long you spoke together, or what about. Third: we have it from your wife, sister-in-law and various workers at Trevisan Wines that you were not on good terms with Signor Posenato. Fourth: there is your long absence of yesterday evening to account for.’
To avoid eye contact this time, Fendtsteig examined the tape-recorder, turned a volume control. It was almost as if they were communicating by fax. Yet the tighter the corner Morris seemed to be getting into, the more determined he became to fight his way out of it. And he began to feel the growing warmth of self-justification. He had sat in that bar. He had gone to Villa Caritas. And if he had killed Bobo afterwards, he certainly hadn’t planned to do so and certainly did not deserve to spend the rest of his life languishing in a prison cell for the fact. He was himself a more attractive and better-educated person than Bobo, or Fendtsteig for that matter, and one presently engaged in various acts of charity, not to mention the religious crisis he was going through. What’s more, he had tried to reason with the boy and offered him a perfectly acceptable and even aesthetically pleasing version of the Massimina story which Bobo
had refused even to consider.
Morris said: ‘I would be more than happy to go to the bar with you and identify the waitress who served me and describe the boy who passed me the local newspaper. Presumably, you asked if an Englishman had been there and they said no, because my Italian is so good.’
Morris put not a little stress on the word ‘my’, as if to suggest that his accent was in fact rather better than Fendtsteig’s, the colonnello having doubtless grown up speaking pidgin Kraut in some God-forsaken, snow-buried village above Bozen. As a result of which he quite probably suffered from that appalling Austro-Germanic superiority complex. Morris felt combative. Italian justice would never allow some mean-minded South Tyrolean to condemn him. And ugly to boot. Those moles definitely looked malignant.
‘As for the boy I spoke to at Villa Caritas,’ he added, ‘he had been working all night, and in any event, they’re all on drugs. Actually, I’m amazed he can remember speaking to me at all. Obviously, what we talked about was the business of Bobo having fired these two workers and then everybody else.’
Fendtsteig pored over his papers, allowing the tape-recorder to pick up nothing more than Morris clearing his throat and the sound of another car pulling into the yard outside. Daylight, mingling with the room’s sad fluorescence, was doing nothing, Morris reflected, to improve the colonnello’s unshaven complexion. The passing time irritated him. They should put a time clock on the man. Like in chess. Into the silence he tried: ‘Are you ill, Colonnello Fendtsteig?’
‘Prego?’ The man had an ugly ‘r’.
‘You look so pale.’
Fendtsteig chose to ignore him. He looked up and folded his arms, thin face to one side, glasses flashing neon. ‘Please, explain last night,’ he said. ‘After which, we have finished.’