by Marco Vichi
Benigno’s house was along that same main road, near the ancient Zocchinu quarry, about a mile and a half past Tramatza. It was an isolated farmhouse with half the roof caved in and sat on rocky terrain about fifty yards from the road. Behind it was a sheepfold and a small stall with pigs, which at that time of year must have been nice and fat.
Benigno was forty years old but looked older. He was short, stocky and taciturn. A bear who had never married. He owned several hectares of land around his house, both on this side and beyond the Carlo Felice road. But he also owned other plots of land outside Oristano, which he’d inherited from an uncle many years before. One could almost say he was rich, though he certainly didn’t look it. They turned on to the rocky dirt road that led to Benigno’s house, and in the distance they saw a lighted window on the first floor. Everything else was pitch black. Pina crossed herself again, muttering a prayer.
Ettore pulled up in the brick forecourt in front of the house and they all got out. The moon was hidden behind a thick layer of clouds. Piras shone his torch all around. Benigno’s Ape, the three-wheeled minitruck, was parked as always under a sheetmetal lean-to that Benigno had built at one corner of the house. At a glance everything looked normal.
‘Nino!’ Pina cried, knocking at the door. The dog behind the house started barking. He was a sweet little mutt with a heart of gold. At night Benigno kept him on a long chain inside the sheepfold.
‘Quiet, Leone!’ Pina yelled. The dog gave a yelp and stopped barking. A harsh smell of sheep wafted through the cold air in waves.
Pina called out again, and they waited. But the door didn’t open. It seemed completely quiet inside the house. Ettore and Piras yelled Benigno’s name three or four times in chorus and banged their fists against the door, but nothing happened. All they heard was the grunting of the pigs behind the house and an occasional bleat and some clanging bells.
‘Maybe he went out with a friend,’ Ettore muttered without much conviction.
‘Nino, open up! It’s me!’ Pina shouted again, with tears in her eyes. Piras put the torch under his arm and, walking very carefully over the uneven brick surface, went to look at the Ape. He bent down to touch the engine. It was cold. But at that temperature, it wouldn’t take long for it to cool, maybe an hour. He turned round and hopped over to the opposite corner of the courtyard.
‘Keep calling him, I’m going round the back,’ he said. Proceeding on his crutches, he went behind the house and heard the flock of half sleeping sheep before he actually saw them. Leone started whimpering again. Piras leaned one shoulder against a picket in the fence, pointed the torch at the dog and went over and patted him on the muzzle. Leone wagged his tail and licked Piras’s hand.
‘Maybe you know where Benigno is,’ Piras said under his breath. He looked around with his torch. The donkey was tied to his post, the sheep were sleeping peacefully, there was nothing that looked strange. He stuck the torch back in his armpit and went on. He could hear Pina still shouting and knocking on the door.
The pigsty was attached to the house. He pulled the bolt open and slipped inside. He peered in over the low wall, shining his torch. The pigs looked at him placidly, sniffing the air. They were enormous and had that strangely astonished look that all pigs have. They must have been stuffed to the gills; there were some leftover apples still on the ground. The pigsty floor was clean. Before sunset Benigno had done what he needed to do; he’d shut the sheep in their fold and fed the pigs. Piras went out, throwing the bolt to lock the door. Hopping back towards the house, he saw the light of Ettore’s torch shine in the darkness.
‘Find anything, Pietrino?’
‘Everything seems normal,’ said Piras, going up to him.
Behind Ettore he saw Pina’s shadow, wrapped in her shawl.
‘What should we do?’ Ettore asked.
‘Let’s go inside,’ Piras said. He started shining his torch on the windows, one by one, to see which was the most vulnerable. Pina took his arm.
‘There’s one in front that doesn’t close well,’ she said, and the three of them went round to the front of the house, where Pina showed them the defective window.
‘It’s that one,’ she said, pointing to a closed shutter. The windowsill was only about three feet off the ground. Pina explained that the shutter was sound, but the fastening on the window didn’t work properly.
‘Take my torch,’ Piras said to Ettore. As Ettore shone the light, Piras inserted his fingers between the slats of the shutter and started yanking violently. But it wouldn’t open. Pina was still mumbling prayers. She had always been very close to Benigno, ever since he lost his parents at the age of ten in a terrible accident.
‘Let me try,’ said Ettore. Passing the torch to Piras, he got a firm grip of the shutter, pulled a couple of times to test its resistance, then started getting serious. After a few fierce tugs, one shutter came off its hinges and very nearly fell on him.
But he carried on until he’d removed the whole thing.
‘Okay, stand aside,’ said Piras. He raised a crutch and thrust the tip of it forcefully at the centre of the window, which opened immediately.
‘Ettore, hold these for me,’ he said, handing him the crutches and then climbing through the window. Ettore shone the light inside. It was the cheese room. Everything seemed to be in order there too. Piras had Ettore pass the crutches back to him and then stuck the torch under his arm again.
‘I’m coming with you,’ said Ettore.
‘No, you wait there with Pina,’ said Piras.
Leaving the room, he found himself at the bottom of the staircase leading to the first floor. He could see the glow of the only light in the house up there, the same light they had seen from outside. He started climbing the stairs. The steps were narrow, and it wasn’t easy with the crutches. Halfway up, he called out Benigno’s name, but nobody replied. When he got to the top, he walked down the hallway towards the first room, where the light was coming from. The door was wide open.
‘Benigno, you here?’ he said softly, as if afraid to wake him up. He thought he smelled a pungent odour, similar to gunpowder. When he got to the door, he looked inside.
‘Fuck …’ he said, stopping in the doorway. Benigno was seated in an old upholstered armchair, his right temple blasted off, eyes wide open and seeming to look at the ceiling. A thick stream of blood ran down his neck to his shirt, soaking it. His arms hung at the sides of his body, the hands hidden by the armrests. Piras approached and circled the armchair. There was a pistol in Benigno’s right hand, and he bent down instinctively to look at it. If he wasn’t mistaken, it was a Beretta 7.65, a regulation navy firearm from the last war. Apparently Benigno Staffa had decided he’d had enough. Standing back up, Piras studied the corpse’s now greying face. The blackened tongue was swelling between half-open lips; it looked like a piece of meat ready to be spat out. Extending a finger, he tried to move Benigno’s head, but it was stiff. Rigor mortis had already begun. So he must have died at least two or three hours earlier. Thinking of Pina, Piras ran a hand over his face. He couldn’t imagine how he would ever tell her. He tried to close Benigno’s eyes, pushing the lids down with his fingers, but they reopened at once. He tried again several times and finally succeeded. He looked around to see whether Benigno had left a note, but then remembered that he didn’t know how to write. On the floor, beside the chair, was a small radio, turned off, and Benigno’s hat, a sort of Basque beret that he’d always had on whenever Piras had seen him. It had almost certainly fallen off when he shot himself. Piras was about to pick it up, but then left it where it was.
He went out of the room and down the stairs, thinking of what he was going to say. He had butterflies in his stomach. He had to make sure that Pina didn’t go upstairs. He opened the front door of the house. There were Pina and Ettore. He stopped in the doorway and looked Pina in the eyes, trying to find the right words … But she already seemed to understand everything and thrust herself through the doorway, trying to go inside. P
iras grabbed her arms and pulled her towards him.
‘Don’t go upstairs, Pina,’ he said. She looked through the open doorway as if she could go through the entire house with her eyes alone.
‘Nino …’ she said, then fell to her knees and buried her face in her hands. She started saying something as she wailed, but it was incomprehensible. Without Pina seeing him, Ettore gestured as if to ask what had happened. Piras mimed the shape of a gun with his hand and pointed his finger at his temple. Ettore opened his eyes wide, then shook his head and looked at Pina.
‘Please, Ettore, go and call the carabinieri in Milis,’ Piras said. He would have preferred to summon the Oristano police, but it would have taken much longer.
‘What about her?’ asked Ettore, pointing at Pina.
‘Take her with you.’
‘Pina …’ Ettore called. He persuaded her to stand up and held her by the arm all the way to the car. Piras watched them drive down the dirt path to the main road, then went back upstairs. He sat down in a chair in front of Benigno and stared at him. With his eyes closed, he looked more serene. If not for the hole in the side of his head, he might be sleeping.
20 December
Bordelli woke up very early that morning. He wanted to start paying calls on Badalamenti’s debtors, a first attempt to establish perhaps some more specific leads than what he’d come up with so far. For the moment he’d singled out seven men, all those under fifty. If he could fit it in he would also pay a call on Rosaria Beltempo, the woman who’d written the letter, to give her back the photographs that had kept her shackled to the past and, of course, the IOUs of her blackmail. She would certainly have a more peaceful Christmas without that sword hanging over her head. Ginzillo somehow didn’t understand these things.
The previous evening the inspector had also assigned Officer Biagi the tedious task of going to the courthouse to request a check of all the records of the people on that list. Something interesting might turn up, even if he didn’t have much hope of this.
He put the coffee on the burner. Waiting for it to bubble up, he went to the end of the hall for no real reason and opened the door to a room he never entered. He turned on the light and stood in the doorway, just looking. A dark wood bookcase full of books he’d read and reread, a carpet from the house in Via Volta, a trunk full of old photographs, an ancient, cast-iron bed with a painted headboard and no mattress. And that was all. He would have liked to turn it into a guest room. Or perhaps a reading room. Or he could even simply leave it the way it was and just go into it every now and then. If he’d had a family, it probably would have been the children’s room. A boy and a girl, both as beautiful as their mother … Right, and after a maudlin thought like that, he might as well recite Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, he thought, trying to laugh at himself. He didn’t want to become an old man full of regrets who wept every time he saw a small child. He closed the door with a smile on his lips, but in fact he felt a little sad. It was better not to think about such things. He had only to brush his teeth and go out. He went into the bathroom and splashed some cold water on his face. The plant on a corner shelf was losing its leaves. He didn’t even know what it was, only that Rosa had given it to him. He poured some water into the pot and went out of the bathroom. As he was getting dressed, he wondered whether he should buy a Christmas tree, perhaps a small one. He decided against it. Christmas trees were for children or, at best, for sulking police inspectors who were always thinking about the past. No tree.
He was about to leave when he heard the coffee bubbling. He’d completely forgotten about it. He raced into the kitchen. The coffee had been boiling for a while already and smelled burnt. He poured it all into the sink and went out.
The sun was already up, but the neighbourhood’s small streets were still in darkness. The sky was the same as the previous day, grey and flat, looking as if it might snow at any moment. There was no wind, so the cold was tolerable. Bordelli got into his car and drove off. As it was barely half past seven, he hoped to find some people still at home. The newspaper kiosks had bold headlines delaring: de gaulle re-elected. By the thinnest of margins, the liberator of Paris had done it again.
Bordelli smiled, thinking that the story of the general with the pear-shaped head wasn’t too different from that of Napoleon, though on a smaller scale.
The first person on Bordelli’s list was a certain Gino Ercolani, aged forty-nine, who lived at Via Torta 22/C. The inspector parked the Beetle with two wheels on the pavement and rang the doorbell. A few moments later, a window on the second floor opened and a very bald man looked out, his face half covered with shaving cream.
‘Who is it?’ he shouted.
‘I’m looking for Signor Ercolani.’
‘That’s me.’
‘I’d like to talk to you for a minute. I’m Inspector Bordelli, police.’
The man made a worried face.
‘What’s this about?’
‘I’d prefer to talk to you in private,’ the inspector said, indicating the people passing by. Ercolani hesitated for a moment, thinking, then closed the window. Seconds later the front door to the street clicked open. Bordelli climbed the stairs slowly and reached the second floor. Ercolani was waiting for him in the doorway in a vest, one cheek covered in foam and razor in hand. He was short and thin, with two sad but placid eyes. On the whole, there was something simian about him.
‘Bad news?’ he asked, a little anxious.
‘I’d say not,’ Bordelli replied.
‘Then would you mind terribly if I finished shaving? I haven’t got much time,’ he said.
Bordelli could hear the water running in the bathroom.
‘By all means,’ he said.
‘Please go into the sitting room and make yourself at home. I’ll be with you in a jiffy.’
Ercolani left him alone and went off to the bathroom, braces dangling round his knees. The inspector went down the short corridor, glancing into the rooms. It was a modest but dignified home. Hanging on the wall in the bedroom was an old print of Christ carrying the cross on his shoulder, in a frame of black wood. It looked like a small picture his grandmother used to have in the entrance to her flat. The bed was a hospital bed, with an iron frame painted olive green and peeling. The kitchen had a central overhead fluorescent light and was sparkling clean. The bathroom door was ajar, and when passing by, Bordelli saw the razor sliding over Ercolani’s face in the mirror. The sitting room featured a threadbare couch and a little glassfronted cabinet with glasses inside. He went in and sat down in an old armchair. While waiting for Ercolani, he checked to see whether he had his cigarettes, but left them where they were. He’d decided not to smoke that day until after lunch. It was the first time he had tried it. He had to take the bull by the horns. Who knew whether he would make it till then. He looked around. There were reproductions of a number of famous paintings on the wall: Giotto, Leonardo, Raphael …
‘I haven’t got much time, Inspector, or I risk missing the tram,’ said Ercolani, poking his head in the doorway.
‘Where do you work?’ Bordelli asked, standing up.
‘In Peretola.’ It was on the other side of town.
‘If you like I can give you a lift, and we can talk at our leisure in the car,’ said Bordelli, suppressing a yawn. The man thought this over for a minute. He didn’t understand what was happening, but in the end he accepted. Putting his coat on in haste, he tucked a small brown leather bag with a broken strap under his arm and opened the door.
‘What sort of work do you do, Mr Ercolani?’ Bordelli asked.
‘I’m an accountant in a transport firm.’
They descended the stairs without speaking. Ercolani smoothed down the few hairs on his head. He seemed a little nervous, but appeared to be a very patient man.
They got into the Beetle and left. Bordelli noticed how composed the accountant was. He kept his feet together, bag on his knees, hands on the bag. Perhaps this was the position he assumed while riding the tram. The
inspector drove slowly through the nearly empty streets in the centre of town. In Via Sant’Egidio they saw a blond young man with hair down to his shoulders and a beard down to his chest. He didn’t look Italian. On his back was a large military backpack as swollen as a balloon, and he was walking towards Santa Croce. The accountant followed him with his eyes, as though unsure of what he was looking at. Then he turned to Bordelli.
‘What did you want to tell me?’ he said, seeming slightly worried.
‘You signed some promissory notes made out to a certain Totuccio Badalamenti, is that right?’ Ercolani sighed, and nodded in affirmation. Bordelli extracted the notes from his jacket pocket and laid them down on Ercolani’s bag. The man picked them up and turned to look at the inspector.
‘What is the meaning of this?’
‘Badalamenti was murdered.’
‘I know, I read it in the papers … but what about these notes?’
‘You can do whatever you like with them.’
Trying to hide his elation, the accountant folded the notes in two and put them in his bag. He sighed again. It seemed almost like a habit.
‘I didn’t kill him,’ he said, staring at the road.
‘I have no doubt whatsoever of that.’
‘How can you say that?’
‘Intuition. I’m very presumptuous,’ said Bordelli.
‘I have to admit, I’m not at all displeased that the man was murdered,’ the accountant said in a whisper, still staring at the road.
‘When did you last see Badalamenti?’