by Marco Vichi
‘Jesus …’
‘And that’s not all. I also found a number of wedding rings that had been pawned, highly incriminating sales agreements and other interesting tidbits, such as, for example—’
‘Have you got it all here with you?’ Ginzillo interrupted him, stiff in his chair.
‘Let me finish. Signor Totuccio Badalamenti was also blackmailing a woman with some compromising photographs and was about to steal her house …’
Ginzillo sat up straight and let his gaze wander about the room for a moment, like a man about to make a big decision.
‘I’ll talk to Cangiani straight away and order the immediate sequestration of all of Badalamenti’s possessions,’ he said with a certain severity. He was an inflexible judge.
‘Before or after Epiphany?’ Bordelli asked.9
‘What? I’ll do it this very day.’
‘Don’t forget the Porsche, which is parked in Piazza del Carmine,’ said the inspector, dropping the golden key chain in front of him.
‘Well, Inspector, you’ve done an excellent job. Go immediately upstairs to Barzi’s office and turn everything over to him for cataloguing,’ said the judge, in the tone of someone very anxious to get the wheels of justice turning.
Bordelli shook his head.
‘You can take the pistol, but I’m keeping the rest myself,’ he said.
‘That’s not legal,’ said Ginzillo.
‘I know.’
‘All these things need to be registered, you know that, Inspector.’
Bordelli gathered up the promissory notes, put them back in their envelope, and slipped it in his jacket pocket. He felt quite untroubled.
‘Since I want to go and talk to them anyway, I’ll return the IOUs personally to the people that signed them. We can call it my Christmas present to them,’ he said.
The judge looked at him with as much severity as his ratface could muster.
‘If these notes aren’t deposited, they’re as good as waste paper, Mr Bordelli, and the courts are certainly not going to demand that the sums in question be paid to a dead usurer. Surely you can see that your Zorroesque gesture is absurd and pointless.’
‘You’re thinking only in terms of the law and forgetting the spiritual side of this.’
‘The spiritual side?’ said Ginzillo, wrinkling his nose.
‘Whoever signs such notes to a usurer usually has a great many ball-aches, sir … So I’ve decided to do a charitable deed.’
‘How noble of you,’ said the judge.
‘I’ve become a boy scout and must do at least one good deed a day.’
‘How very kind of you … Unfortunately normal legal procedure dictates that in cases such as this—’
‘I’ve already decided,’ Bordelli interrupted him, politely but decisively.
Ginzillo heaved a long sigh, like a highly irritated man of power. Then he pointed at the inspector and said:
‘All right, then, I’ll discuss it with Dr Cangiani, and, you’ll see—’
‘Don’t keep putting spanners in my works, sir. I wouldn’t want the assistant prosecutor or the press to know about that famous warrant you refused to give me last February. Know what I mean?’
The judge leaned forward and thrust a pen brusquely back in its holder, a sort of pewter sugar bowl.
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘I’ll explain. I could have arrested Badalamenti almost a year ago, but you defended him, saying he had friends among the city’s politicians and important families … Maybe it’s better if Prosecutor Cangiani doesn’t know this. You know how wicked journalists can be. And if I say I’m going to give these promissory notes back to those who signed them, I assure you I will do it.’
The judge listened to him with one hand hooked behind his neck. There was contempt in his eyes.
‘Just this one time, Bordelli … because it’s you,’ he said.
And he even managed a sort of smile, but only with his mouth.
The inspector stood up.
‘Have these accounts frozen as quickly as possible,’ he said, leaving Badalamenti’s chequebooks on his desk.
‘Obviously,’ said Ginzillo.
‘I’ll leave you to your work, sir,’ the inspector said, standing up, but the judge still wanted to talk.
‘Don’t forget that we are both in the same boat, Inspector, and we pursue the same goals.’
‘That might be worth clarifying.’
They looked each other hard in the eye for a few seconds, with neither of them managing to say what he had on the tip of his tongue.
‘What do you intend to do about the murder?’ the judge asked, to change the subject.
‘Find the killer, naturally.’
‘So then it’s already in the bag, I trust,’ said Ginzillo, who at this point only wanted the case to be concluded quickly, no matter how, shut up inside a folder and buried in the dust of an archive.
Exiting the Palazzo di Giustizia, the inspector crossed Piazza San Firenze and took the Via del Proconsolo to return to police headquarters. He’d left his Beetle in the courtyard and gone out on foot. The rain had stopped during the night. It was rather cold outside, but the air had turned drier. There was still a chance it might snow.
Although it was barely ten o’clock, the streets were already thronged with people and cars had trouble moving. Tourist carriages had also entered the mix, and every so often one got a good whiff of fresh horse manure. The same festoons and lights as last year hung between the buildings. Shop windows were full of cotton tufts and flashing little lights of all colours. The shopkeepers were making a fortune.
He turned down Via Cavour. In the distance he heard the plaintive drone of a zampogna bagpipe, one of the saddest sounds in the world. He remembered what Christmas was like when he was a child: no cars, no flashing lights, no noise … other than the sound of the horses’ hooves and the lament of the zampogne that seemed to rise up from the bowels of the earth. An atmosphere of magic seemed to fill the air at home and follow him all the way under the covers.
He chucked his cigarette and tried to think of a present for Rosa. He slowed his pace so he could look in some shop windows, sometimes stopping, then deciding against whatever it was. He couldn’t make up his mind. When he reached the end of Via degli Arazzieri, he turned down Via San Gallo and went into the courtyard of the police station. He nodded to Taddei, who was on duty in the guard’s booth at the entrance, and the policeman returned his greeting with a vaguely military salute, bringing a fat hand to his bullish head.
Entering his office, he scanned his desk for Diotivede’s report on Badalamenti, but it wasn’t there. He rang him at the lab, and the doctor said he’d had to interrupt his work for an urgent post-mortem and hadn’t finished.
‘Could you give me a ring when you’re done?’ Bordelli asked.
‘I’ll send the report to your office.’
‘I’d rather come there.’
‘I’ll be working this Sunday. Try coming by in the afternoon, if you feel like it.’
‘I’ll think about it … Have you decided about Christmas dinner?’ Bordelli asked.
‘We’ll talk about it when you come.’
‘All right.’
They said goodbye and the inspector went and opened the window, to let in a little air. A cold gust of wind blew in, smelling of snow. The sky was a uniform slab of a colour between white and grey, but normally it only snowed in the hills around the city.
A second later Mugnai knocked on the door and told Bordelli that the commissioner was looking for him and had asked for him to come to his office as soon as possible. The inspector smiled. He had expected this, after his conversation with Judge Ginzillo, but not quite so soon.
‘Mugnai, do you know whether anyone has managed to talk to Badalamenti’s next of kin?’
‘I did myself, Inspector,’ said Mugnai, seeming proud of the fact.
‘Who’d you talk to?’
‘His mother. S
he started crying and screaming like a madwoman and saying that her son was a saint. It was a pretty painful scene, sir.’
‘Did you tell her we can’t release the body just yet?’
‘I did, but she kept on yelling and I don’t know if she heard me.’
‘Send a telegram to the local police.’
‘Of course, Inspector … How’s Piras doing?’
‘Much better. You’ll see, he’ll be back at work in a few weeks.’
‘Please give him my best.’
Mugnai look his leave and left the room with his typical duck waddle. To get it over with, Bordelli immediately went upstairs to see the commissioner. He knocked and went in.
Inzipone seemed fairly upset.
‘At last! Do you know who called me, Bordelli? Judge Ginzillo,’ said the commissioner, standing up.
‘To wish you a happy Christmas?’
‘Spare me the wit, Bordelli … Don’t you ever realise that you take things too far?’
‘Not this time – at least, I didn’t think so.’
Inzipone shook his head.
‘Threatening a judge … Have you gone mad?’
‘Ginzillo is too touchy.’
‘You make life difficult for me, Bordelli, and I really don’t need that right now. And what’s this business about the promissory notes?’
‘I’m going to give them back to their rightful owners. It’ll be a sort of Christmas present to them.’ Inzipone sighed, seeming already resigned.
‘You are well aware, Bordelli, that the law calls for different procedures,’ he said without conviction.
‘Yes, I know, but I think what I’ve decided to do is better.’
The commissioner sighed and ran a hand over his face. He seemed tired.
‘I’ll look the other way this time, but it will be the last,’ he said. Deep down he seemed happy with the decision. But, just so as not to give Bordelli too much satisfaction, he stared long and hard at him, purposely donning the expression of the man of authority struggling to tolerate yet another breach of discipline.
‘That’s all I have to say, Inspector,’ he said at last, sitting back down. Bordelli had already opened the door when Inzipone called to him again.
‘How’s our boy Piras doing?’ he asked.
‘He’s recovering.’
‘Next time you hear from him, give him my regards and best wishes for the holidays.’
‘I certainly shall.’
The inspector closed the door behind him and walked slowly back to his office. Sitting down at his desk, he started turning his swivel chair round on its base: right … left … right … left … He was worried … If something didn’t turn up soon, this murder was likely to end up on the stack of unsolved cases begun by that of poor Wilma Montesi ten years ago. He had to admit that he would rather find out who killed Montesi than catch a loan shark’s killer, even if unsolved murders were detrimental to the social order on the whole. They set a bad example and only served to encourage those who hoped, literally, to get away with murder.
Around two o’clock he realised he wasn’t very hungry and went out to eat a panino at the bar in Via San Gallo. He never ate at the station’s cafeteria. If he didn’t at least go out to eat he would feel like a prisoner.
After taking coffee he returned to the office. Lighting his second cigarette, he continued thinking distractedly about Badalamenti. Whoever killed him had to have had a great deal of rage in him to attack him in that fashion. The scissor blades had penetrated deep into the stocky usurer’s thick neck, as if they’d been pounded in with a hammer. And Diotivede was almost certain the killer was left-handed. For the moment, that was all they had to go on.
He calmly stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and then rang De Marchi, chief of the forensics lab, to find out the results of their search of Badalamenti’s flat. De Marchi was precise as usual. He promised straight off that he would send the written report by the end of the day. Bordelli thanked him and asked him to tell him the results straight away. De Marchi said he’d analysed the ashes and butts of a few cigarettes. They were all of the brand
‘Muratti Ambassador’ with filter, just like the packets that were found scattered about the flat. To all appearances they were the brand the victim smoked. But in the same ashtray, and also on the floor in the study, they had found some ash residue of an Alfa brand cigarette, though they were unable to recover the butts. Perhaps the cigarette had been smoked down to the end, since that brand had no filter.
But as far as that went, De Marchi continued, Alfas were a common cigarette. As for the rest, they did find some hair besides the victim’s, almost all bleached blond, but not all belonging to the same person. And the three strands of dark hair they found belonged to two different people.
‘Obviously they could belong to anyone who set foot in that flat over the last few months,’ De Marchi said.
‘Fingerprints?’
‘Aside from Badalamenti’s, we found fingerprints belonging to sixteen different people, with a particularly high concentration in the study. I don’t know how useful they’ll be. They could have been made by just about anyone, on any day, but I’ll have them checked to see if any belong to any previous offenders. As for the scissors, as I’ve already said, they were cleaned with a handkerchief or cloth … Or else the killer was wearing gloves.’
‘The result is the same,’ said the inspector.
‘With all the movies they make these days, even children know you have to wear gloves when you kill someone,’ De Marchi said, sighing.
‘Anything else?’
‘Not much. We picked up some other stuff from Badalamenti’s clothes and around the body, but nothing important: a few little bits of tomato, breadcrumbs … that sort of thing.’
‘And that’s all?’
‘And that’s all, Inspector.’
‘Thanks. Please send me the written report as soon as you can.’
‘Of course, sir.’
Bordelli hung up and leaned back on the springs of his chair, making it squeak. De Marchi was right to be pessimistic. All those fingerprints were practically useless. Clearly the killer had taken care not to leave any traces about the flat, just as he had been careful with the scissors as well. The other fingerprints could belong to just about anybody. Everyone on the list of debtors had a plausible reason for entering the apartment, and for the moment they were the only hypothetical suspects. He shook his head. Given the nature of the case, the findings of the forensics lab seemed to lead nowhere. The only element unlike the rest was Marisa, the beautiful girl in the photographs.
It was almost midnight. Piras was playing poker with two friends, and between the three of them they’d already drunk half a bottle of filu e ferru.10 They were at the home of Angelo Nireddu, in front of a warm fire. Angelo lived on a small, steep street near the church and worked as a surveyor for the town of Oristano. The other friend was Ettore Cannas, a muscular, nervous lad who worked as a farmhand. He lived nearby with his parents and a much younger sister, but he also had three older brothers who had gone to live in Italy proper, whom he often spoke of as heroes to emulate.
All three card players had been to Piras’s house, along with a few other neighbours, to watch Giorgio Gaber on the telly. When the half-naked dancing girls appeared, Maria looked out of the corner of her eye at Gavino and shook her head while she continued cleaning the vegetables.
After the final evening news report, Pietrino and his two friends had walked to the Nireddus’ house. The kitchen was the warmest room. A log of olive wood was burning its last between two rough-hewn stones that served as firedogs. After adding more wood, they’d pulled out the playing cards and a bottle and sat down at the table. Angelo’s parents and younger brothers had gone to bed some time before, but they all slept in the other part of the house behind closed doors, so there was no need to whisper.
As they were playing, Angelo started telling an old story his grandfather Pietro had told him a year before he
died. It related to events that had taken place in Bauladu just after the war. To play one of their many pranks on the sexton, some lads from town had brought a coffin to the cemetery with someone alive inside. A little while later the sexton had heard some knocking and opened the coffin to see what it was, only to find a living person inside. Without wasting a second, he bashed the man in the head with his shovel a good dozen times, until he seemed truly dead.
Then he went to the mayor and said to him:
‘Listen, when you bring me a dead person, he’d better be dead, because today you brought me a live one and I had to kill him.’
Since that day nobody had ever played any more tricks on the sexton.
They carried on chatting of this and that, from women and old tales of revenge to town gossip and bizarre stories like the one about the sexton. And they ended up talking about the bandits of Orgosolo. Ettore immediately got worked up. He was a bit thick-tongued and had a square head that hardly moved when he spoke.
‘Mesina’s right.11 And anyway, he never kills anyone. Those pricks in Rome made us a thousand promises and then forgot about us. In Italy there’s money for everyone, and here we’re all broke …’
‘Play,’ said Angelo.
‘There’s poverty everywhere, Ettore, even if they don’t show it to you on the telly,’ said Piras.
‘But Mesina’s right, bloody hell!’ Ettore retorted. Piras didn’t feel up to contradicting him.
‘Play,’ said Angelo.
‘How’s Cadeddu doing?’ Piras asked, to change the subject.
‘He’s found himself a wife up in Milan,’ said Angelo.
‘Have you seen her?’
‘Only in a photo. Pretty girl, but she’s blonde,’ said Ettore, screwing up his mouth.
‘You got something against blondes?’ asked Piras, whose girlfriend Sonia was a blonde Sicilian.
‘When you look at ’em close up it’s like they got no blood,’ said Ettore.
‘You won’t find their blood in their hair …’
‘Bravo, Pietrino, now we know your girlfriend’s blonde too,’ said Angelo, sniggering, then throwing two aces down on the table.