River of Shadows: A Commissario Soneri Mystery (Commissario Soneri 1)

by Varesi, Valerio

  “And how many angelic males do you have fluttering around you?”

  “Carry on in this vein and you will very soon be seeing all the angels you can use.”

  Soneri froze. Hadn’t he heard that phrase somewhere before?

  “Hey! Are you still there? Did you get frightened when I raised my voice?”

  He needed silence to concentrate, but Angela, chattering away in his ear, would not relent. He held the telephone at arm’s length. He could hear the faint voice buzzing away inoffensively like a bee in a blossom while he concentrated on where he had heard that remark. In the yard below, an officer in the white coat of the forensic squad passed by, and then he remembered: the nursing sister, Decimo’s friend. She was the one who had said that he was worried about seeing “the angels”.

  He put the telephone back to his ear. “Do you know of a place called ‘the Angels’?” His tone was so serious that Angela replied at once. “In Mantua. It’s a cemetery.”

  Of course, Angela was from Mantua. “No woman is more precious than you,” he said, and abruptly ended the conversation.

  Juvara could not fail to notice his state of euphoria.

  “You can stop all of that,” Soneri announced. “I’ve found the cemetery.”

  The ispettore looked at him in amazement, put down his papers and dismissed the two assistants with a jerk of his chin. But before he could seek an explanation, his superior had vanished.

  Within a few minutes, Soneri was driving towards the lower Po valley. The houses were beginning to peep out of the mist, taking shape slowly, like the pieces in his investigation. It occurred to him that all of his inquiries were leading to the Po, towards that flat land where the sky was never visible. And he had little faith in coincidences.

  Mantua always gave him the impression of land that had risen from a huge bog. It was said that graves there could not be dug deeper than one metre lest the bodies ended up buried in water. On the other hand, it seemed to him bizarre that with all the lands of the plain available, they piled the dead one on top of the other like stacks of Parmesan cheese.

  He asked for information about the San Pellegrino section. It was quite a recent wing, with bouquets of artificial flowers and the marble still shiny. It occurred to him that although his job brought him frequently into contact with death, this was the first time that an investigation had taken him to a cemetery. He usually had to occupy himself with the crueller aspects of death, never with its more peaceful, silent side. The unseemly poses of corpses were invariably a yell of rage, and a commissario was called on to deliver the vengeance of law. Once the case had been neatly filed away, he had never had occasion to go and see where the victims ended up, not even those whose lives he had combed through with an investigator’s disrespectful zeal.

  When he arrived in front of the smooth, marble plaque without name or date, he felt torn between surprise and disappointment, the same feelings he had once felt when his pistol jammed as he was about to fire on a man. The burial niche in the wall was empty. As was the one next to it. He checked again: square E, row 3, number 32. The crossword puzzle of the dead each time led him to the same conclusion, to the afterlife’s unfilled box. Then he looked over at one side and intuition provided him with the solution, as intuition can sometimes supply the correct word from the opening letters alone. There was a photograph of a woman with a severe countenance: Desolina Tonna of Magnani, and just below: “Husband, daughter, brothers and sisters.”

  He reached the graveyard’s administrative office just before it was due to close. The clerk on the information desk was seated in front of a computer screen and over his shoulder the commissario could see that he was engrossed in a video game. The office was there to field enquiries about where the dead were buried, although the dead that Soneri was inquiring about were in all probability not there, or at least not yet.

  “I’d like to know who owns the burial places thirty-two and thirty-three in square E, third row, the San Pellegrino section.”

  He expected the official to object on the grounds of confidentiality, so without waiting for an answer, he held up his police identity card.

  The man appeared to choke on the words he was on the brink of uttering, and turned to his keyboard. “Number thirty-two has been acquired by one Decimo Tonna and thirty-three by one Anteo Tonna.”

  It was all he needed to know.

  He did not go back to the police station. Once he had crossed the Po by the Casalmaggiore bridge, he turned along the road which followed the course of the river on the Emilia side. As he was getting out of his car, Juvara called him.

  “The note was a threat,” he told Juvara. “It explains why Decimo was so frightened.”

  “Why?”

  “It corresponds to the burial places which the Tonna brothers had acquired beside their sister years ago. You understand now?”

  “I do. The killer was well informed about their lives.”

  “He must have been somebody from the locality.”

  “But how did you work out that it was the Mantua cemetery you were looking for?”

  “Oh that …” Soneri muttered evasively. “It was all to do with the angels. That’s what they call it in these parts.”

  Juvara had no idea what Soneri meant, but he was thankful to be relieved of the tedious task he had been set.

  The Tonnas’ niece was not in the bar. Soneri found himself face to face with a tall young man with long hair and one earring.

  “You must be the matelot who didn’t quite make it, or have I got that wrong?”

  The young man stared at him vacuously, before replying: “I didn’t like it, so I gave it up.”

  He did not seem very bright. Perhaps he took after his mother.

  “Is your mother—?”

  “No, she went into town.” The boy interrupted him curtly, as if to suggest that the conversation was at an end.

  Although he had nothing particular in mind to ask, Soneri chose to persist. He had never had much time for braggarts, but there was fun to be had with them. “You didn’t fancy life on the river, then?” he said, deliberately mocking.

  “No, maybe a bit at first, but then …” The boy was obviously annoyed.

  Half a dozen young people were in the bar, their backs towards them and each one absorbed in a video game. The one behind the bar was not much different from the others.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Romano.”

  Names with Fascist connotations seemed to be a family tradition, although the long hair and earring would hardly have been congenial to Anteo.

  “You didn’t like the life or you didn’t like your uncle Anteo?”

  “I am not cut out for the solitary life, and anyway, the river is always the same.”

  “And yet you carried a lot of cargoes. I’ve been having a look at the rosters …you can’t have been short of cash.”

  Romano gave him a swift, nervous glance. He had the air of a pupil who could not answer the teacher’s question. “The barge is very old and wouldn’t have been able to struggle on much longer. The engine eats oil and it needed no end of care and attention …it couldn’t have gone on even if my uncle …”

  Soneri thought he picked up a trace of antipathy. He looked out and saw some big, shiny cars parked in a row, an image of the affluence which had invaded the Po valley like a flood. “Were you ever aware of your uncle having received threats? Maybe money problems?”

  “He alone had dealings with the clients. He didn’t even have any competition because, considering the times we’re living in and the few landing stages left, it’s much more convenient to transport stuff in lorries. He didn’t realize he was out of date.”

  “Is that why you left?”

  “In part. Who’s going to put their money in barges? They’ve had their day. Don’t forget, my uncle was around eighty.”

  “Did you try to persuade him to settle down on dry land?”

  “My mother tried to get me to do it several
times, but he would just lose his temper. He said that it was his life and he liked it that way. After a bit, I said good-bye. I couldn’t stay and rot in the middle of a river. I don’t like the Po and I’m not interested in it. And it is a threat. And then all this stuff about its legends and its beauty …young people nowadays couldn’t care less and shove off.”

  “Will you leave too?”

  “As long as the bar is here, no. I’ve done my best to bring it up to date, with things that people of my age like,” he said, looking over at the video games with their flashing lights and loud music. “In this town, there’s nothing to do but play card games in the Italia and drink Fortanina in Il Sordo, where you’ve got the added attraction of the same old moans and groans from Verdi.”

  In the background Soneri heard the irritating, repetitive strains of the video games. “Do you know Barigazzi, Ghezzi and the rest of them?”

  Romano gave a disgusted scowl. “Shitty communists!” he hissed.

  “At least you agree with your uncle on that one.”

  “A bunch of losers who only believe in taxes and stopping other people from getting on in life. If it was up to them, we’d still be going up and down in big boats. They hate us because we own something. Look, they call us shopkeepers, but they’re gushing with sympathy for those foreign beggars who turn up here and start stealing. My uncle was always on the other side. He had his barge and he was always his own boss.”

  These were the only sentences Romano spoke with any spontaneity. They were fired out like a belch, having plainly been rehearsed for some time in a brain not much given to rumination.

  Soneri got to his feet. Everything now seemed clear to him, but he was not sure if it had much to do with the investigation. He strolled down towards the embankment until, leaving the colonnade behind him, he heard the water pumps at work.

  Barigazzi told him that the pumps had been going for a couple of hours. They had arrived that morning from Parma and it had taken some time to get them set up in the best operational position. “A waste of effort,” he said.

  The chug-chug of the diesel engines seemed to cause the inlets to shake, and sent up clouds of smoke. To one side, he noticed Aricò in earnest conversation with a group of about twenty people. “Who are they?” he said.

  “The ones who were evacuated from their houses in the floodplain,” Barigazzi said. “It’s for their sake that this whole shambles is under way, but if they don’t erect some kind of breakwater across the river upstream of the port, they’ll never drain anything. The pump that can empty the Po has yet to be invented.”

  Vernizzi joined them to say that the dredger and the excavators were placed sideways across the river to close off the floodplain. Barigazzi spat on the grass and that seemed to be his verdict.

  “They want to go back to their houses,” Soneri said.

  “Do they really believe that merely getting the water out will solve their problems? The walls are soaked, so when it freezes, they’ll crack. Houses don’t dry out here in the Po valley in winter.”

  “Wouldn’t you do the same?”

  “If you buy a house on the flat lands, you’ve got to allow for the fact that things will not always go well. Sooner or later, the Po’s going to come and pay you a little visit.”

  Aricò was perspiring. He had pushed his cap to the back of his head, exposing the beads of sweat on his forehead. The crowd who clustered round him, pacified by seeing the pumps at work, had allowed him a moment’s peace. The people forced out of their homes had moved on to the embankment to watch the water being drained out litre by litre and poured back into the riverbed. Soneri too made his way up to the elevated road, leaving the town centre behind him. Having reached the same point where he had been the previous evening, he crouched among the branches which had been so damaged by the current. He moved to halfway down the embankment and studied the poplar trees with the water lapping around them.

  In the silence, the inlet looked like an immense pot from which thin streaks of vapour were beginning to rise, as invisible as the lines used in fishing for barbel. The Canadian poplars made the autumnal twilight draw in more quickly. Squatting on his heels, he waited, rolling the extinguished cigar around his mouth. He lit it, but held the glowing end towards him, as his grandfather had done at the front. He took wartime precautions, but he did not expect to see a warship with cannons, only a solitary boat in a strip of dead water. The light faded at the same pace as the mist thickened. It seemed to him that the time had come.

  Soneri became aware of its presence, hearing it before he saw it. He heard the low swishing sound, as when water is poured from a bucket over gravel, then made out the profile of a boatman rowing with few, slow strokes in a rhythm mastered by long familiarity with the oar. Undoubtedly it was the same man as the night before, and if he was coming back, it was a sign that he had not noticed anything on the previous occasion. The commissario let him approach until the boat was in line with the stone-crusher. A few more strokes and he could have called out to him, maybe even have looked him in the face, but suddenly the man shifted his oar to the other side of the boat and changed tack. He seemed to want to go back, even if he was only making for the centre of the poplar wood. The tree trunks stood in geometrically regular lines and diagonals, dividing equally all that water between the two embankments.

  Soneri kept his eyes fixed on the boatman, who gave the impression of circling round like a buzzard on a warm afternoon in summer but then, unexpectedly, he jabbed his oar against a trunk to stop the boat, which stayed where it was, swaying slightly. He looked as though he were peering hard into the flood water which, in the absence of any current, was completely still. Soneri looked too and noted that the stagnation, by freeing the water of the clouds of sand, had caused it to lose its iron-grey colour as well.

  The man dipped his oar to the right and set off again in the direction of the riverbank where Soneri was waiting. When he was ten metres away, the commissario rose to his feet and called out, causing the boatman to turn rapidly. He remained very still from the neck up. The boat swayed slightly without making him lose his balance. Soneri had the impression that for a few moments the boatman was undecided whether to flee or draw alongside him. When he realized that he was close enough to be recognized, he gave a couple of energetic strokes to direct the boat towards the great embankment. The commissario walked a few steps in the squelching mud, keeping his feet well apart to avoid tumbling into the river. The boatman drew closer, until he was almost on the grass.

  He said not a word, restricting himself to jerking his chin in a way that implied a question. He was elderly, but still full of energy and pride. His enormous hands were like Barigazzi’s, in whose fist glasses could disappear. He now observed Soneri from the shell of the boat, his eyes grey and piercing, with the strong hint of a challenge.

  “A strange hour to be out between the embankments.”

  “Every hour is a good hour. The thing is to know where you are going.”

  “And where were you making for?”

  “I’m here to see how well the pumps are working. I’ve put some stakes in the ground.”

  “Has it dropped much?” Soneri said.

  “Five centimetres. Nothing much. But the water is still coming in over the barrier upstream of the port. I’ll have to adjust it.”

  “Where do you moor your boat?”

  “At the port. Where else with the waters this low?”

  “How about if we arrange to meet in Il Sordo?”

  The man thought it over for a moment, the intensity of his stare obscured in the gathering dusk.

  “No, not there. We can meet in the Italia in thirty minutes.”

  “You think you can make it in that time?”

  “Listen, policeman, I know the Po better than you know the inside of your police station.”

  Being in the large, single room of the restaurant felt like being inside a refectory. The loud voices, the smoke and the crush made the meeting oddly discreet.
There was too much going on and too much to overhear to allow people to take notice of anything. The commissario made his entrance and occupied one of the few free tables no bigger than a window recess. Only when he was sitting down did he see that the boatman was waiting for him at the bar, where he had already ordered a white wine. He caught sight of Soneri and made his way over, followed by someone else, evidently a colleague. When they arrived at the table, Soneri eyed them up and down as training required, then gave them a sign to sit.

  “This is my lawyer,” the boatman said.

  Soneri took in his bulk and the skin made leathery by the sun on the Po. He did not look like a lawyer.

  “What made you think I was a policeman?”

  “Your type is easily picked out,” the man said. “I’ve a lot of experience of them.”

  The second man stretched out a hand with the dimensions of a small shovel. “Arnaldo Fereoli, but everyone around here calls me Vaeven. It’s dialect for someone who comes and goes.”

  “I know the dialect. Do you have a barge too?”

  “A magano.”

  Soneri turned to the first man who, without offering his hand, said: “Dino Melegari, or Dinon to the people around here.”

  Melegari was built on a monumental scale. Soneri had not appreciated the sheer bulk of the man when he was in the boat, but now that he was there in front of him, he seemed as overwhelming as the statues of Hercules and Antaeus outside the questura. “Will you join me? A drop of wine?”

  “I never say no to another glass.”

  They were served by a tiny, silent, serious-looking girl who seemed just out of school.

  “Will they do any good?” Soneri asked, meaning the pumps, which were still droning away on the other side of the embankment.

  Dinon stretched out his great hands so wide that he almost touched his neighbours. If he closed them too suddenly he might crush the table. “The plain is low and the water is going down. They had to do something to satisfy the people who were evacuated from their homes.”