by Marco Vichi
‘Forty-three days ago.’
‘Is this yours, by any chance?’ Bordelli took the ring that Diotivede had found in the usurer’s stomach out of his pocket and showed it to him. Ercolani barely glanced at it.
‘No,’ he said.
The inspector turned on to the Viali, and they sat for a while in silence. Every so often Ercolani shook his head and sighed. A very fine, freezing rain started to fall. It stuck to the windows. Bordelli turned down Viale Redi and continued on towards Novoli. There was more traffic than fifteen minutes earlier. In front of them a sleepy little boy was watching them through the rear window of a Fiat 600, and out of the blue he made a face at them. Bordelli replied in kind, and the boy burst out laughing and fell down on to the seat. Then the Fiat turned right. Bordelli continued to the end of Via di Novoli, and they arrived at Peretola.
‘Signor Ercolani, I know it’s none of my business, and you’re perfectly free not to answer … but I’m curious. How did you ever end up going to Badalamenti?’
The accountant lightly clenched his fist and, of course, sighed.
‘I need money for my sister,’ he said.
‘What for?’
‘She’s mentally ill. I didn’t like her staying at the mental hospital, so I put her in a private institution … Take the next right, please. We’re there.’
Bordelli obeyed the accountant’s instructions and pulled into a large paved yard with a number of lorries and vans parked higgledy-piggledly. At the far end was a warehouse, and behind it were some now abandoned fields. They were at the margin between city and country. Ercolani glanced at his watch.
‘I’m early,’ he said. He still seemed a bit astonished by the unexpected news. Bordelli parked the car in a corner of the yard and turned towards him.
‘What are you doing for Christmas, Signor Ercolani?’
‘We’re all getting together at my mother’s place. I’ll be thinking of you, Inspector. I would never have been able to pay those IOUs.’
‘Try not to think about it any more.’
‘I would never have been able,’ the accountant repeated, eyes searching for the right handle to open the door. Bordelli pointed it out to him. He felt sorry for this mild-mannered accountant with four strands of hair on his head. He seemed like someone who asked for nothing in life, as if it were some kind of sin. Ercolani opened the car door and put a foot outside. Then he turned towards Bordelli.
‘Thank you very much, Inspector. Happy Christmas.’
‘Happy Christmas to you too.’
The accountant got out of the car, and his leather bag fell to the ground. It was as if he’d never set foot in a car before. Picking up the bag, he waved goodbye, then closed the door and started walking towards the warehouse, head tilted slightly to one side.
Bordelli pulled out his list and crossed out Ercolani’s name. According to Diotivede, it could not have been him. He was too short. More importantly, the inspector had seen him shaving with his right hand.
The second man on the list was Benito Muggio, born in 1936 and residing in Via del Canneto, which was an ancient, sloping little street above Via de’ Bardi that was too narrow for a car to pass through. Bordelli left the car in Piazza de’ Mozzi and walked the rest of the way. It had stopped raining. The sun was stifled by clouds, but the cold was strangely dry. He looked up at a monument to the fallen in the fight against Fascism, erected in ’47 to replace a bas-relief of Il Duce. It oozed rhetoric. It might actually have been better to leave a few signs of the reign of Fascism here and there, as in Rome, to keep the memory alive in those who’d lived through it and to let the young see what they’d been spared. Bordelli tried to imagine a public speech by Mussolini in the television age and realised that probably nobody would have gone to hear him.
He started climbing up Costa Scarpuccia, pleased that the desire to smoke hadn’t yet become too strong. He liked this area very much. It was close to the centre but already had one foot in the country. A little farther up, beyond the high walls of Via San Leonardo, there were vineyards and olive groves. From the upper floors of the houses one could see Florence below, so close that one could almost touch it.
He turned right down Via del Canneto, passed under the first arch and stopped. He pressed the only buzzer beside a peeling door, and a dull ring echoed within. Hearing a clatter of metal over his head, he took a step back to have a better look. A window protected by a rusted grille opened, and an old woman with a headscarf tied under her chin looked out.
‘Who is it?’ the woman asked, suspicious.
‘Good morning, signora, does Benito Muggio live here?’
The old woman turned round towards the inside.
‘Benito! It’s for you! Beniiito!’ she shouted, then she disappeared inside, leaving the window open. A few moments later a young man of about twenty-five appeared. He had a nervous face and thick, black eyebrows and looked at Bordelli with a questioning air but without saying anything. The inspector started digging for his badge.
‘Are you Benito Muggio?’ he asked.
‘And who are you?’
‘Inspector Bordelli, police. I’d like to talk to you for a minute.’
‘About what?’
‘Nothing serious. Can I come in?’
The young man withdrew from the window. Bordelli was still looking for his badge but couldn’t find it. The old woman reappeared.
‘He says he’s coming down,’ she said.
‘I’ll wait for him.’
Bordelli kept searching his pockets, but the badge wasn’t there. He must have left it in his other jacket … He wasn’t ageing well … A policeman never forgets his badge. He looked around, relishing the calm of the ancient little street. It felt like a medieval village at the top of a mountain. He would gladly live in a place like this. A rat walked serenely past him and scurried into the opening of a stone drain. Another rat was walking along the wall as though out for a stroll after breakfast.
He heard a clatter of bolts, and immediately Benito opened the door and came outside. He was tall and fat, with massive arms. They shook hands.
‘Could we talk out here?’ Muggio asked.
‘The house is a little messy.’
He was rather well dressed, though tie-less and wearing very worn-out shoes. But it was clear that he tried to look smart. He kept swallowing and blinking his red eyes as though he hadn’t slept. Bordelli didn’t feel like standing.
‘
Could we go sit over there?’ he asked, pointing to a low stone wall on the other side of the arch. They went and sat down. Behind them were six or seven enormous plane trees without leaves. Muggio apparently didn’t feel like sitting, since he immediately stood up again. The old woman’s head reappeared at one of the windows looking out on to the trees, above the arch. Benito gesticulated impatiently at her.
‘Go back inside, Mamma!’ he shouted. The old woman muttered something and closed the window.
Bordelli calmly pulled out Benito Muggio’s promissory notes.
‘I believe these are yours,’ he said and, clasping them between two fingers, held them before the young man’s eyes. Muggio didn’t understand at first. He looked at them for a second, then recognised them and practically snatched them out of Bordelli’s hand.
‘Tell me the rest,’ he said.
‘Badalamenti’s been killed,’ said Bordelli.
Muggio stared at the inspector with eyes flashing.
‘I know. I read it in La Nazione … And I’m glad,’ he said between clenched teeth.
‘It’s not a crime.’
‘And these notes?’
‘
They’re yours.’
‘Ah …’ said Muggio, a malevolent smile on his lips.
The inspector put a cigarette in his mouth but didn’t light it.
‘When was the last time you saw Badalamenti?’ he asked.
‘Am I a suspect?’
‘For the moment I have no choice but to consider everyone a suspect. But if you don’t want
to answer …’
‘I’ve got nothing to hide. I saw the bastard a fortnight ago.’
‘Where?’
‘At his place.’
‘Why did you ask someone like Badalamenti for a loan, Signor Muggio?’
Benito scratched his head.
‘It was a woman … It was all because of a stinking bitch.’
‘Don’t you have a job?’
‘I’m supposed to get an answer after the holidays.’
‘What are you doing for the holidays?’
Benito sneered.
‘For starters, I’m going to celebrate like this.’ And he started tearing up the promissory notes slowly, one by one, into little pieces, putting the little bits in his trouser pocket as he went along.
The inspector waited for him to finish, then dug into his pocket and pulled out two rings. He showed Muggio the one with the name Ciro inscribed on it, but Benito said he’d never seen it before.
‘This, on the other hand, I think is yours,’ Bordelli said. He handed him a gold wedding ring with the names of the newlyweds and the date inscribed on it. Benito blushed.
‘It’s my mother’s. I would definitely have got it back, even if I had to do a John Wayne …’ he said, miming a pistol with his hand.
‘Why not use a pair of scissors?’ the inspector said.
Muggio took a step forward.
‘I don’t think I would have been able to kill him, Inspector. I honestly don’t know. Or maybe I could have, since that southern bastard really did deserve it … but I didn’t do it.’
The inspector looked at his watch and stood up.
‘Don’t worry, I know it wasn’t you,’ he said.
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Intuition,’ Bordelli lied.
‘Aren’t you ever wrong, Inspector?’
‘Hardly ever.’
Benito bit his lip.
‘I don’t know who killed him, but whoever it was, he did a good thing,’ he said. The sentiment was apparently heartfelt.
Bordelli smiled.
‘I have nothing more to ask you, for the moment,’ he said.
‘Do you believe in God, Inspector?’
‘It’s a difficult subject,’ Bordelli said.
‘I do. He’s always looking down at us from above, spitting on us. If there was no God, the world wouldn’t be this way.’
‘What way is that?’
‘It wouldn’t be such a pile of shit.’
‘Goodbye, Signor Muggio, and happy Christmas. And good luck with your work.’
‘Thanks … and thanks for the IOUs.’
They shook hands and Benito went back towards home.The inspector looked up and saw the old woman at the window. She seemed never to have left. He raised a hand and waved goodbye.
‘Happy Christmas,’ he said.
‘Happy Christmas to you, sir,’ the old woman replied, smiling and exposing her gums.
The inspector headed towards his car. Walking back down the street, he took the list and struck out the name of the unemployed Benito Muggio. When imitating John Wayne holding a gun he’d used his right hand. So he wasn’t left-handed, and Diotivede had said …
Bordelli went back home to fetch his badge, got back in the car, and continued his rounds, knowing he had to be patient. His incentive was simply the hope that sooner or later he would find someone worth pursuing.
By half past eleven he had already struck two more names off the list. Giorgio Parroni was just over forty but too weak and ill even to crack a nut. He was even unfit for work. His wife was a docile, quiet little woman who moved about the house like a ghost. When the inspector gave Parroni the promissory notes, the man had acted strangely, giving a start as if wanting to spring forward and kiss him. Then he’d hidden the notes in a drawer and started weeping in front of a photo of his dead mother. The house was dark and stank of humble cooking. Bordelli had fled with a desire to see the sun.
Mauro Baldi was at home because he was a barber and the shop was closed on Mondays. He was a colossus but wasn’t left-handed. The gorilla had crumpled the notes into little balls with gusto, one by one, letting them fall to the floor.
‘I’ll tear them up later and throw them away, but I’ve imagined this scene many times … I’ve been wanting for so long to crumple them up and throw them on the floor.’
He’d borrowed from Badalamenti because he needed to make mortgage payments on the shop and had lost a fair amount of money at the races. His wife was out shopping and knew nothing.
‘If Manuela ever found out there’d be hell to pay,’ he’d said, bringing a hand to his head. Bordelli had reassured him and left after declining a glass of wine.
He’d shown both men the ring with the name Ciro inside, but neither had recognised it. He crossed out their names and continued his rounds. There were three names left on that first list, and they all lived in the area between Via Pisana and Casellina. If they worked he was unlikely to find them at home at that hour, but it cost him nothing to try anyway. In less than half an hour he had rung three buzzers and spoken with two wives and a mother, all three rather worried and frightened to have a policeman call on them. The inspector reassured them, saying that it was a simple routine check for firearms permits and that he would return around lunchtime or at the latest between 7 and 8 p.m. He could have asked where the men worked and gone to see them at once, but he didn’t want to create any needless problems. He had all the time in the world.
At one o’clock, the sky was still the same dirty white as at eight that morning, uniform all the way to the horizon. Atop the hills in the distance there was a trace of snow. Three degrees less and it might snow in the city as well.
The inspector stopped at Porta Romana to eat a panino and drink a beer, and took advantage of the moment to ring police headquarters. He had them put Rinaldi on and asked him whether there was any news of the girl in the photographs, but neither Rinaldi nor Tapinassi had managed to find her yet
He got back in the car and went up Via Senese. Driving past Via delle Campora he couldn’t help but turn and look down the street. Until the previous spring a cultured, unpleasant man who murdered four children had lived there. After Bordelli arrested him, the man was murdered in turn in prison. All in all, a nasty affair. But he had other memories of that period, such as … Milena …
He accelerated, as if wanting to leave those memories behind. Continuing past the Due Strade, he went by Galluzzo and the Certosa. About half a mile before Tavernuzze he turned left down a little street that went steeply uphill. He knew it well. It led to Impruneta by way of Le Rose, Baruffi and Quintole.
Rosaria Beltempo, the woman Badalamenti had blackmailed, lived in Le Rose. Bordelli had the compromising photos in his pocket, as well as the promissory notes she had signed to guarantee the blackmail. He couldn’t wait to give it all back to her and wish her a happy Christmas. He hoped not to encounter any suspicious husbands or housemates who might create problems, but in her letter to the usurer the woman didn’t mention any men, so Bordelli’s concern was perhaps unfounded.
It took him a while to locate the house, since out in the country not everyone took the trouble to post their street number outside. In the end, however, he found it. It was an old farmhouse about a hundred feet from the road, with a large brick loggia and an olive grove behind it. There was a narrow, unpaved driveway leading up to it. Bordelli parked the Beetle on the threshing floor in front and got out. It was already half past one. The house wasn’t as big as the one he’d seen at Impruneta and, actually, would have been perfect for him. He looked around. It was really a very nice place. He would gladly have lived there. With three or four chickens for eggs, a kitchen garden with a bit of everything in it, perhaps a few fruit trees and a hundred olive trees. He had to start thinking seriously about it.
At first glance the house seemed abandoned. The roof was warped and a gutter had come detached and was dangling in the void.Tall grass was growing through the cracks in the brick
pavement of the threshing floor. Opposite the house was a large, half-ruined barn full of wreckage. The shell of an old Lancia Ardea, a pair of rusted Lambretta scooters without wheels and resting on bricks. Bicycle frames, an old Motom that looked as if it had caught fire, and countless other things thrown about helter-skelter.
He entered the loggia and knocked on the door. There was no reply. He knocked again, harder this time.There were motor-oil stains and faint tyre tracks on the tiled flooring, as if someone parked a motorbike there. There wasn’t a soul around. The house really did seem uninhabited. Aside from those marks under the loggia, there was nothing to make one think otherwise. He went round to the back of the house. The olive grove was fairly large and sloped slightly downwards. It looked rather neglected, the ground all overgrown with weeds, though the olive trees looked well tended and the olives had been harvested.
Twenty or so paces from the house, under a fig tree, there was some wire fencing enclosing a small wooden shelter.Within the enclosure some twenty-odd chickens were scratching about in the company of a white rooster which looked too old to enjoy all that good luck. A few items of clothing had been hung out to dry on a line, only men’s garments, mostly shirts. A bit farther from the house was a sort of large tool shed, as ramshackle as everything else. Here and there Bordelli could see abandoned grapevines, their black, contorted stocks strangling the support posts while the unpruned shoots snaked along the ground for several yards. Beyond the olive grove was a forest of pine and cypress that climbed up the hillside. Here and there in the distance could be seen large yellow farmhouses amid the vineyards, a number of churches, and the crenellated towers of a few fake nineteenth-century castles. It wasn’t often that Bordelli saw such open spaces. He liked the countryside more and more, and in an era like the present one, he was perhaps the only person who thought that way. Perhaps he needed to stop thinking about it and finally take the plunge. Sell his flat in San Frediano and move to a place like this, or perhaps even farther away from Florence … To Impruneta, or Strada in Chianti, or even Greve. He started strolling through the olive grove, enjoying the light breeze caressing his face. He tried to imagine himself at one with the land. He didn’t know the first thing about it, but he would gladly ask the advice of the local peasants so he could learn. He would try making wine, growing salad greens and tomatoes and raising chickens. It couldn’t be that difficult.