“You know what I do, Piero? You know what I do?” Spadano tapped his belly. “You know why I’ve put on weight? A lot of the time, I’m sitting in a helicopter going backwards and forwards over the mountains, while over a loudspeaker we announce the hour and the date.”
“To entertain the squirrels?”
“There are wolves up there in the Sila.” Spadano tapped the ash of the cigar out of the window. “Four-legged and two-legged.”
“Why the loudspeaker?”
“If and when a kidnap victim is released or manages to escape, if he can recall the time that he heard us going over, we can get a grid reference. Which enables us to move in on the hiding place.”
“You’re successful?”
“Not very.”
Both men laughed.
“We work a lot with the Americans now. They believe the ransom money is channeled into drugs. So we have the DEA and a lot of efficient American equipment—and I do a lot of sitting around talking pidgin English. And I drink a lot of American beer.”
“Your helicopter pilots don’t complain about the Toscani?”
“Why were you looking for a Panda—a four-wheel-drive Fiat?” He pointed to beyond the windscreen. The car had now been landed on to the dyke. Rivulets of muddy water still trickled down the bank into the canal. “Why aren’t you over there, looking to see if there’s a corpse in the boot?”
“A woman, Spadano. A friend—a woman I used to know.”
“What about her?”
“I thought—the Questura thought she’d been murdered. In fact it was a question of mistaken identity. It was her sister—a mentally fragile and unbalanced woman—who was murdered.”
“And your lady friend?”
“She’s disappeared.”
“In a four-wheel-drive Panda?”
“I think she was with a man.”
“The car looks as if it’s empty.”
“Maybe she’s drowned. Perhaps she’s lying at the bottom of the canal.”
“You don’t sound convinced, Piero.”
“Or perhaps I just don’t care, Colonello Spadano.”
55: San Teodoro
Thursday, 9 August
Pisanelli whispered, “I thought you were going to see your daughter in Bologna.”
“I thought you were going on holiday. What happened to all that grease in your hair, Pisa?”
“It’s called gel, Commissario.”
It was dark and pleasantly chill within the San Teodoro church. Trotti followed Pisanelli, both men walking silently. Mid-morning and a priest was taking mass. Old women muttered their responses and the air was heavy with the smell of dust and incense.
“Over here, Commissario.”
At the back of the church, a woman in black sat near the font. She was caught in a circle of pale light projected from a round window high in the wall. Her waxy face was old and wrinkled; so too was her dress, and her dark stockings had been allowed to drift down to her ankles. She was wearing tartan slippers and in the gnarled white fingers she held a rosary. A black cardigan over her shoulders.
Beneath the woman’s white hair that had been tinted and given thin, permanent waves, the hard face reminded Trotti of the old peasant women he had known in the hills when he was a child.
“Signora,” Pisanelli whispered gently, leaning over her. He was wearing his suede jacket and he spoke in a hushed, persuasive voice. “Here is my colleague. He would like to speak to you.”
She did not look at Trotti. “Why?” She sat by herself. A walking stick was attached to her chair. Her eyes remained on the officiating priest.
“Perhaps you can help him.”
“Why does he need my help?” She spoke in the city dialect, thick, harsh and asthmatic.
“Signorina Belloni who was so cruelly murdered. My friend must find the killer.”
The woman crossed herself. She then kissed her index finger.
“He must find the killer before he strikes again, before he strikes another woman. Commissario Trotti’s afraid the man may be a sex maniac.”
She turned her head and shoulders to look at Trotti, her wrinkled mouth open. She wore a little gold chain round her neck.
“And since you live opposite the entrance to Signorina Belloni’s house, signora . . .”
The rosary disappeared into a pocket of the black dress. The woman got up slowly, putting her weight on the stick. Pisanelli helped her and they turned towards the west door. As she went past, but without stopping, she dropped a coin into the alms box.
“The widow’s mite,” she said without smiling, as if she were repaying a debt.
(The parish church of San Teodoro was Romanesque in its architecture; on the north wall there were frescos depicting the city as it had been at the beginning of the sixteenth century, long before the many civic towers had been destroyed or allowed to fall down.)
Trotti pushed the wooden door open and they went out into the glaring heat and sunlight of the deserted city.
Taking the church steps one at a time and moving sideways, like a decrepit, three-legged crab, the old woman made her way to the ground-floor flat opposite the brick wall of the church. From somewhere about her person, she produced a large iron key. “Please enter, signori.”
Trotti and Pisanelli entered the dark room. It was cool, damp and smelled of boiled vegetables.
“You may sit down.”
There was an old-fashioned cooker and she lit a gas ring, heating a blackened saucepan. “You see,” a gesture towards the window, “I can see everything that goes on.” She coughed, pulling at the cardigan on her shoulders.
“That’s very good,” Pisanelli said encouragingly.
A bed, a pile of Famiglia Cristiana and on the wall a series of framed diplomas, a few artificial flowers, an almanac and an old photograph of Pope John XXIII.
“Tell the commissario what you saw last weekend, signora.”
For the first time the old woman looked at Trotti. “I know you, don’t I?” Her eyes approached his face and she peered at him carefully.
“It’s possible, signora.”
She asked, wheezing asthmatically, “You go to church?”
“Not as often as I would like to.”
“There is a lot of sin in this world.”
Trotti nodded. “So my colleague here informs me.”
“The young people of today do a lot of things which are wrong.”
The two policemen acquiesced.
“I saw that girl.” The old woman, leaning against the back of a chair, gestured with her free hand towards the gate on the far side of the road.
“Signorina Roberti?”
“I suppose you’d like something to drink. My nephew was once in the police force.” Without waiting for an answer, she made her way, now resting her weight on the table, to a sideboard. She opened the cupboard and took out a bottle. “He now works in Libya. Grappa, signori?”
Within the bottle, partially immersed in the colorless grappa, sat the wooden silhouette of an old man with a hat, stick and a dog at his feet. She poured a few drops of grappa into two grimy glasses. Pisanelli took one. The other he gave to Trotti.
(At the end of the war, an old peasant in Acquanera used to sell contraband grappa from a rubber inner tube, patched and re-patched, that he wore slung over one shoulder. Villagers used to buy the colorless liquid, but it was rumored that the peasant distilled the liquor from human feces. Many years later, Trotti had asked Maserati in Scientifica if it was possible to make alcohol from human excrement. Maserati had laughed.)
“You know Signorina Roberti, signora?” Trotti asked, without touching his drink.
“A silly little girl. A child. She lives in the same building as the headmistress.”
“Signorina Belloni.”
“The headmistre
ss doesn’t come to our church very much—Don Lionello says she goes to Pietro in San Ciel d’Oro. She doesn’t interfere in other people’s business. She is an educated woman, but she is not proud.” Almost against her will, the old woman added, “She always has a smile for the people she meets.”
“Did you see Signorina Belloni last week?”
“Sometimes the headmistress—your Signorina Belloni—sometimes she brings me a little something. I have my husband’s war pension but . . .” She raised her work-worn hands. At the same time she coughed.
“Have you seen Signorina Belloni?”
“I saw the girl.” Scarcely lifting her feet she went back to the cooker and threw leaves on to the boiling water. The air was filled with the pleasant smell of basil.
“When was this?”
“She has a boyfriend now. He comes when the parents are not there. I know the father.”
“Dottor Roberti.”
“Dottor Roberti. Once he came to see me about my lungs.” She tapped her flat chest. “The doctor is a good man. Respiratory problems are not his specialty, you know. He is a dermatologist.” She added in a conspiratorial tone, “He’s from Turin.”
“I didn’t know that,” Trotti said.
“I don’t think he knows about the goings-on of his daughter.” The old woman turned to face them, both gnarled hands on the table. The rosary had reappeared between the waxy fingers. “I’m sure that if he did, he’d do something about it. I know that today there’s no religion, no morals. Like the Americans.”
“Americans?”
“The Thursday Witnesses,” she said with disapproval.
“You mean Jehovah’s Witnesses,” Pisanelli said, smiling.
“Call them what you want—when they come to my door, I send them away. I don’t want to talk with them. I am Catholic. I’m not interested in their American religion.”
“What do the Witnesses do, signora?”
“They come at all times of the day—even weekends. To get rid of them, I accept the magazines that they give me. But you don’t think I read that heresy, do you? Don Lionello says it’s heresy.”
“You throw the magazines away?”
“For the lavatory. I don’t throw anything away. Money doesn’t grow on trees.” She coughed. The small eyes were bright. “I use their magazines in the lavatory.”
Pisanelli and Trotti looked at each other. Trotti then asked, “Signorina Belloni—the headmistress—has she ever given you a magazine of the Jehovah’s Witnesses?”
“The people—they’re young people. They come to the door and they give me their magazines. But I don’t read them.”
“Have you ever given a magazine to Signorina Belloni?”
“Of course not. Those magazines are heretical. Don Lionello says that I mustn’t read them.”
“Of course, of course.”
“More grappa?” She lifted the bottle with its wooden man.
Trotti shook his head. “To get back to the girl . . . You saw Signorina Roberti last week?”
“The doctor’s daughter?”
“Signorina Roberti—her name is Signorina Roberti.”
“Roberti? I don’t know if that is a Turin name. I went with my husband once to Turin.”
“When did you see Signorina Roberti?”
“I know she is the doctor’s daughter. I know she’s supposed to be studying at the university. But you know what the students are like. You know what the girls are like. Today everything’s so easy. That’s why there are no morals, signori. There’s no hardship.”
Both Trotti and Pisanelli nodded their agreement.
“When I was a girl there was hardship. We didn’t have any time for all this pleasure. I went out to work when I was thirteen. It didn’t do me any harm. Nowadays there’s all this sex. We never knew that.” Little bubbles of saliva had formed at the corners of her thin lips. She ran a hand across the old, waxy face. “We were Catholic.”
“When did you see her?”
“With a man. And he wasn’t her boyfriend. I know her boyfriend.”
“Did you recognize the man?”
“I’ve seen him and I know that he’s tall. But this man was shorter. A complete stranger. And with all these diseases they talk about on the television.” She raised her hand towards a television set on a stand at the foot of the narrow bed. The screen was concealed behind a curtain in floral pattern. “There are no morals now. And too much sex.”
“When was this, signora?”
“Ever since divorce. We had a referendum. That’s when it all started. Free love. No wonder there are so many diseases. Don Lionello says . . .”
“When did you see Signorina Roberti?”
The widow gave Trotti a long, appraising glance before answering. “I can’t always sleep, you know. The doctor at San Matteo says mine is a very difficult case. He gives me pills—but I can’t always sleep. I have only one lung.” Here she put a hand to the chest of her shiny black dress. “I lost the other one, working at the SNIA Viscosa. They operated on me for over six hours. I went to Lourdes but sometimes I can’t sleep at night. I lie in bed and I cough. I cough and I think about my poor husband, God rest his soul.” She crossed herself, again kissing the index finger. “That’s why I saw her. Last Sunday morning—I knew I was not going to sleep and that I would be tired for mass. Don Lionello says that God is forgiving and that if I can’t sleep, it doesn’t matter if I miss mass. Don Lionello says I must look after my health.”
“You saw Signorina Roberti on Sunday morning?”
“The silly child with a different man. You think I don’t know what they were going to do?” She shook her head, moving her shoulders at the same time. “When I think that she is the good doctor’s daughter.”
“Who did you see Signorina Roberti with?”
“A man. She must have been very drunk—which doesn’t surprise me, because all the young people drink today. She drinks, she smokes. And I saw her coming home late, hanging on to him. A man, a small man.”
“What time?”
“Half past three—I heard the church bells. Half past three and the little idiot—no better than a cheap prostitute, she comes tottering home on the arm of her new lover.”
“Did you recognize the man?”
The eyes twinkled with venom. “I never saw him leave.” With venom and jealousy.
56: Laura
They stepped out of the damp flat and it was suddenly very hot and windless in the Piazza San Teodoro. Pisanelli slipped on a pair of sunglasses.
“You didn’t sleep at home, Commissario?”
“I slept in Ferrara—at the Carabinieri barracks.”
Pisanelli whistled.
“The Carabinieri found the Fiat Panda that Rosanna left her hotel in. It had been driven or pushed into a canal.”
“She drowned?” Pisanelli glanced unhappily at Trotti as they crossed the square. Coming in the opposite direction was a prelate in black cassock and partially hidden beneath a broad black hat. He was sweating profusely as he talked into a portable telephone. Trotti heard the word “confession.”
Deep in conversation the priest took no notice of the two policemen. He scurried up the steps and into the church.
“Rosanna Belloni was drowned?” Pisanelli asked again.
“Nothing in the car. A rental with Ferrara plates—and no prints. Not after more than a couple of days in the water.”
“And her luggage at the Pensione Belvedere?”
Trotti shook his head. “According to the Carabinieri, there were just clothes. When she left, Rosanna must’ve taken the rest of her baggage.”
They went through the small doorway cut into the wooden gate and found themselves in the same neglected courtyard. Up the stairs, following the walls and their grimy paint.
“When are you going off with A
nna, Pisa?”
“I’ve decided to stay in town,” Tenente Pisanelli said simply, removing the sunglasses.
“Then you can accompany me. I need to see Carnecine at Garlasco.”
“Commissario, you’re almost in a good mood. Eat one of your cherry sweets.”
“It has of course occurred to me, Pisanelli, that Rosanna Belloni is not guilty of her sister’s murder.”
They came to a door. There was an oval name plate in burnished brass, Dott. Roberti. Pisanelli rang the bell. He said, “If she’s got any sense, Laura Roberti’s gone off to the Langhe—or gone to find her Gian Maria.”
“In Ferrara.”
“Ferrara. Like your Panda? A coincidence, Commissario?” Pisanelli rang the bell again, this time more insistently. For a moment there was no sound. After a couple of minutes, a light came on behind the opaque glass. The door was opened. Within the large apartment, all the shutters had been drawn.
Laura Roberti yawned. She appeared slimmer than before, dressed in a nightgown. Her black hair needed combing. She wore no makeup. There was sleep at the corner of her eyes, which she now rubbed with a small fist. The tanned feet were naked, showing the neat line where she normally wore her espadrilles.
“Good morning.” An apologetic smile that reminded Trotti of other women. She ran her hand through her hair, which fell back on to her face in a straight line. Although she had clearly just got out of bed, her face was surprisingly fresh. She pushed several strands away from her eyes and looked at Trotti. “Excuse the mess.” There was eucalyptus on her breath, because she had just cleaned her teeth. “I was sleeping.” She added, “You’d better come in.”
The air was cooled artificially; Trotti noticed the quiet hum of air conditioning. Cool but not damp like the old widow’s flat. They followed her down the hallway to her self-contained bedsitting room.
The small television in one corner silently showed the flickering movement of a mid-morning Japanese cartoon.
Trotti glanced at the kitchen range, the dishwasher, refrigerator, cooker and the overhead air aspirator. A couple of dirty plates in the sink.
The small bed was unmade.
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