“Pioppi?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Trotti had raised his voice. It echoed off the empty walls. “Nando?”
“Who’s speaking?” A man’s voice, the familiar accent of Bologna.
“Signor Trotti—I’d like to speak to my daughter. Is that you, Nando?”
“Nando’s not here. Who’s that speaking please?”
“Pioppi’s father.”
“I’m sorry—I don’t understand.”
“Signora Solaroli’s father—Pioppi’s father. Is she all right? How is she?”
“The policeman?”
“Where’s Pioppi?” Trotti was almost shouting. “Is she all right? Where’s Nando?”
“I’m sorry—I’m Nando’s brother. Nando’s at the hospital.”
“How is she? I thought the child wasn’t expected for another day or two.”
“She went into the hospital last night.”
“Has she had the baby? Is it a boy?”
“We’re still waiting—I don’t know.”
“What d’you mean, you don’t know? Is my Pioppi all right? Has something happened?”
“I think Nando said he was going to phone you.”
Trotti’s knuckles were white around the receiver. He was frowning, concentrating, staring downwards at the slanting, yellow light on the floor of the office.
Anna Ermagni watched him, her beautiful eyes unblinking. She reached out and touched his wrist.
Somewhere a pigeon was cooing.
“Is my daughter well?”
“She had pains last night—at about two o’clock in the morning—and they sent an ambulance. There was some bleeding. But it seems it was a false alert. She’s in the hospital. She has a private room and my brother is with her. Mama is with her.”
“There’s nothing wrong?”
“Listen, I can give you the number, Signor Trotti. Ospedale Civico—Bologna four-two-three forty-two fifty-three.”
Trotti repeated, “Four-two-three forty-two fifty-three,” writing down the number with his left hand on a pad that Anna Ermagni pushed towards him. “Thanks a lot. You say she’s all right?”
“Last night Signora Solaroli was a bit tired—but she ate well. A false alarm.”
“Is there an extension?”
“It’s a direct number.”
“Thanks,” said Trotti, and depressed the hook of the receiver. He immediately banged the white button.
He glanced at Anna who was smiling at him, her fingers crossed.
The receptionist came on to the line.
“Signorina, four-two-three forty-two fifty-three, please, in Bologna.”
“I hope this isn’t a private call.”
“Perish the thought. Bologna four-two-three forty-two fifty-three.”
“A boy or a girl, Commissario?”
“The sooner you give me the number, the sooner I can tell you.”
42: Phone
“Pioppi, is that you?”
“Papa.”
“Pioppi, are you all right?”
“Where are you phoning from, Papa?”
“The man at your house told me you were in the hospital. I should’ve phoned earlier. Are you all right, Pioppi? I’m catching the next train to Bologna.”
“There’s no need.”
“And the baby?”
“There’s no baby—not yet.”
“The man said you’d started to bleed.”
“It’s nothing.”
“It can’t be nothing if you’re in the hospital. Why did you start to bleed? And when are you going to have your baby?”
“A false alarm. I lost some blood.”
“Why did you bleed?”
“The baby’s due the day after tomorrow.”
“Why didn’t you phone me?”
“There’s really nothing to worry about, Papa.”
“Of course I’m worried about you, Pioppi.”
“There’s no need. You must rest. Are you phoning from the lake?”
“Where’s Nando?”
“Nando’s with me now.”
“I’m getting the train tonight, Pioppi.”
“That’s absolutely stupid.”
“I’ll be there by tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow morning the baby won’t even be due.”
“Have you phoned your mother in America?”
“Mama has better things to worry about.”
“Why are you so stubborn, Pioppi? Why won’t you accept my help? I am your father—I want to be with you.”
“It is really not necessary.”
“And the little boy?”
“What little boy?”
“The baby—it’s going to be a boy, I suppose.”
“Listen, Papa, there’s no need for you to come down. I am all right. The baby’s not yet due. I will ring you tomorrow. I will ring you at the villa on the lake. And in the meanwhile, have a holiday. Relax. I’m with Nando here. His mother and his sister are with me. I’m all right, I swear to you. Don’t worry about me. And there’s no need to bother Mama. Tell her I’m well. Just look after yourself, Papa. Ciao, amore.”
“But Pioppi . . .”
“I love you, Papa. Ciao.”
43: Snoopy
“Pretty girl.”
“My goddaughter.”
The unlit pipe was in his mouth and Maiocchi raised his eyebrows in mild, amused surprised. “You get around, Piero.” He was sitting on Trotti’s desk.
“My goddaughter Anna Ermagni, whom I haven’t seen in years.”
“Bit young for you, isn’t she?”
“She’s Pisanelli’s girlfriend—his fiancée.”
Maiocchi laughed. Then he nodded to the envelope on the table. “What do you think?”
“The photo?”
“You recognize the woman, Trotti?”
“It’s Maria Cristina Belloni.”
“You were at the autopsy?”
“I left halfway through—when an uncle identified the corpse.”
“As Maria Cristina?”
Trotti nodded.
“I wanted to go to Broni,” Maiocchi said. “But I waited for you, hoping you could come. I hung around here until past one o’clock, by which time I heard that the corpse was identified as the younger sister.”
“Maria Cristina,” Trotti nodded.
Maiocchi took the pipe from his mouth and thoughtfully tapped it against the palm of his hand. “If it’s the younger sister who’s dead, what d’you think, Piero?”
“I don’t think anything until I’ve seen Bottone’s report of the autopsy.”
“You have an opinion. What d’you think?”
Trotti shrugged. “What do I think?”
“Well?”
“Nothing, Maiocchi. I think nothing. Not now.”
“You’re not helping me.”
“Think? I should’ve stopped thinking a long time ago. All I know is that my daughter is in the hospital awaiting a baby any moment. All I know is that she’s already had a slight hemorrhage.” Again he shrugged. “What d’you want me to think?”
“Who killed her?”
“Nobody killed Rosanna.”
“Who killed her sister?” A prod of the pipe stem towards the Polaroid. “This wretched woman in the photo.”
“Listen.” Trotti tapped his chest. “I thought it was Rosanna they killed. The face was smashed in—it was badly bruised and covered with dry blood. I thought it was Rosanna. Zani at the scene of the crime said it was Rosanna. Boatti said it was Rosanna. Everybody seemed to think it was Rosanna.” Trotti paused. “Rosanna Belloni wasn’t a close friend—but I knew her. And what I knew of her I liked. She was a kind, good person. For all I know, she still is
. Some ten, twelve years ago she used to be the headmistress of that pretty young woman you just saw—of my goddaughter. I honestly thought Rosanna was dead—and I thought I could help.” Trotti sighed, “Apparently she’s not dead. That’s good and I’m very pleased. Yet nobody seems to know where Rosanna Belloni is. Nobody knows who she’s with or where she’s gone. She sent a card from the Po delta—but she hasn’t been seen in her hotel for four days. She went off with a man in a four-wheel-drive Fiat, Ferrara registration.”
“You’re looking for her?”
“I don’t think I really care anymore.”
“Piero, it doesn’t make any sense.”
“I could’ve told you that.”
“Snoopy and Luca—the Snoopy woman was Rosanna’s sister. From the photo you can see that the Snoopy/Beatrice woman is Maria Cristina.”
“She’s dead now, lying in the morgue.”
“The phone call, Trotti, was on Tuesday morning . . . when we got called down to the river. But the Snoopy woman was already dead. You people found her on Monday night.”
“Giorgio Boatti—a neighbor—found her.”
“Dead people don’t make phone calls.”
A dry laugh. “I certainly don’t get to make phone calls—perhaps the questore would like me dead. I have to go through the blonde woman at the desk.” Trotti looked up at Maiocchi. His face was pale.
“Somebody’s trying to pull the wool over our eyes.”
“A lot of people are trying to pull the wool over our eyes.” Trotti took the packet of sweets from his pocket. “Occupational hazard. It’s something you get used to.”
“Luca’s here,” Maiocchi said, putting the pipe into his mouth and biting on the stem. He looked like an earnest university professor. “You’ll speak to him, won’t you?” He took a box of kitchen matches from his pocket.
Trotti unwrapped a sweet.
“Since you’re here, I’d like you to see him, Piero.”
“I’m not free, Maiocchi.” Trotti put the sweet in his mouth. “My goddaughter—I’ve promised to take her out for a meal this evening. Her and her fiancé, Pisanelli.”
“Piero, I’d very much like you to talk to him.”
“I’m going to follow my daughter’s advice. Tomorrow I’m going up to the lake. Perhaps, later, when the little boy’s born, I’ll drive down to Bologna. Pioppi doesn’t want me there for the time being. Her husband’s with her—and I’ll get down later. Once the worst is over. She seems to think that I want to take charge of her life—but I simply want to help. I want the best for her.”
Maiocchi stood up. The young face was drawn. He gripped the unlit pipe between his regular teeth; he ran a hand through his hair. “I am asking you for a favor—a favor between colleagues. A favor between friends.”
“Understand me, Maiocchi.”
“The whole Belloni affair stinks and I honestly thought you of all people, Piero, would want to get to the bottom of this thing before Merenda . . .”
“Merenda?” With an unexpected vehemence, Trotti shouted, “For God’s sake, don’t talk to me about Merenda, will you? Merenda, Merenda, Merenda. I’m sick to my back teeth of hearing about Merenda.”
It was suddenly very quiet in the small office.
“You know where you can stuff your Merenda.”
44: Gustavo
The young man was waiting for them.
Maiocchi’s office was clean and very neat. A map of the city on the wall above his desk, another of Lombardy, dotted with colored thumbtacks. Grey filing cabinets along one wall. There was none of the bulging, beige dossiers that seemed to have invaded most of the Questura. A desk lamp, a telephone (electronic keys and no need to go through the switchboard), a crucifix and a crystal ashtray that was free of the slightest trace of ash.
A potted dieffenbachia basked in the waning sunlight.
“This is a copy of the suicide letter we found down by the river.” Maiocchi gestured to an armchair and Trotti sat down.
“Feelings are not to be thrown away, like a discarded toy,” Trotti read out. “Juvenile handwriting, clearly female. A couple of spelling mistakes.” He dropped the photocopy on to the dustless desk. “Signed Snoopy.”
“And this, gentlemen,” Gustavo Maiocchi nodded to the young man, “is Signor Luca Pontevico. I thought that he could help us—you and me, Commissario Trotti—with our enquiry.”
The young man was sitting opposite the two policemen. His handsome face was drawn. Dark hair that glinted in the warm yellow light, soft skin and the black shadow of a fast growing beard. Behind the thick lashes, the eyes were dark brown. The features were regular and the bushy eyebrows rose in an amused, ironic curve. Deep dimples in the cheeks. He was wearing a white T-shirt and faded jeans. The muscular arms were tanned and dark with hair, the hands strong, the nails clean. A small tattoo on the right forearm, a military motif. There was a packet of cigarettes tucked into the rolled cuff of his T-shirt sleeve.
The firm, young jaw moved slowly as he chewed on gum, his mouth open.
He wore American-style cowboy boots; he had crossed a leg over his thigh and Trotti could see the worn heel.
Maiocchi spoke to the young man. “Commissario Trotti is coordinating the investigation into the death of Beatrice . . . The woman with whom you—by your own admission—had intimate relations.” Maiocchi paused. “Snoopy—the woman who’s been murdered.”
“She’s really dead?” The dark, liquid eyes looked at Trotti.
“We don’t yet have the autopsy report,” Trotti said. “You would like to see the corpse?”
“Dead?”
“Murdered.” Maiocchi had pulled a penknife from his pocket and was cleaning the bowl of his pipe. The black ashes he tapped into the earth of the dieffenbachia.
“How can she be dead if she left her stuff down by the river?” Luca shook his head. “That’s not possible.”
“Perhaps somebody wanted us to think she was alive.”
“What on earth for?” The eyebrows arched.
“Perhaps you can tell me that, Signor Pontevico.”
“I can’t tell you anything. I’ve already said everything. There’s nothing else.” He paused. “You think I killed her?”
Trotti said, “You may well have a motive.”
“Motive? I scarcely knew the woman.”
“Well enough to get into bed with her.”
The pale face relaxed slightly; the hint of a smile of satisfaction. “I never asked her to go to bed. It was all her idea. We’d scarcely been dancing—at the nightclub in Redavalle—we’d scarcely been dancing ten minutes when she had her hand in my trousers.”
“That’s par for the course? A woman you hardly know—within a few minutes she starts making lewd advances?”
“It’s not the first time it’s happened to me.”
“Lucky man,” Maiocchi said.
“Hard work. Picking up women is a skill—it’s something you learn. With experience, you can normally get what you want.”
“What you want?”
Luca shrugged with false modesty.
“And so you screwed her?” Trotti asked.
The corner of the lip turned upwards. “That’s what she wanted.” He took the packet from his sleeve and lit a cigarette with an American lighter. He did not remove the gum from his mouth. His eyes squinted as the smoke rose from the smoldering tip. “Women need their sex, just as much as we do.”
“You must’ve realized she was a lot older than you?”
“Sure.”
“That didn’t bother you?”
“Women are like cars—they need to be run in. You can get more mileage out of a thirty-five-year-old model than out of an eighteen-year-old. Like prototypes, young girls need a lot of tuning. And they’re capricious. Difficult to keep to a steady cruising speed. The great thing about
older women is they need their sex. And they’re honest enough to admit they like it.” He shrugged the broad shoulders of his T-shirt, while the sensual lips parted in a brief sneer. “I was doing her a favor. I didn’t really desire her. I knew she was over forty-five. With tits like that, I knew she had a lot of mileage on the clock.”
“You found her pretty?”
“Pretty? I wasn’t intending to marry her, was I? She wasn’t pretty—and I don’t know whether she could cook and sew.”
“You sound very professional,” Trotti said.
“Professional? I do a bit of car racing—rallies, that sort of thing. I’ve done several laps at Monza.” With finger and thumb, he removed the cigarette as he exhaled. “Listen, she was okay. No Ornella Muti. But okay. Good company. Fun to be with. At first she seemed very lively.”
“Where was this?”
“At Redavalle—it was a Saturday at the end of July.”
Maiocchi glanced at a wall calendar. “The twenty-first?”
“My parents had just gone off to the sea. They left on the eighteenth.”
“How old are you, Signor Pontevico?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“And your occupation.”
He shrugged. “I help my father.”
“Doing what?”
“We raise chickens and export them, mainly to the Middle East.”
Trotti jotted something down on a piece of paper. “You say that Signorina Belloni was lively.”
“It was like Beatrice—she called herself Beatrice—was on some kind of drugs. On uppers. Very nervous, and she kept whispering dirty things in my ear.”
Maiocchi had lit his pipe. “What sort of things?”
Looking at Trotti, Luca said, “And she insisted on paying for the drinks . . .”
“She had money?”
“That’s the difference between young and old women. Young women are out for what they can get—one way or another, you have to pay. Nothing comes free.”
“Belloni had money?”
“A lot of money.” He whistled softly as he shook his head. “She even wanted to give me some.”
“You accepted?”
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