“So it all seems fairly clear. The suicide theory seems the simplest and therefore also the most probable.”
Generally this concept, applied to a violent death, never failed to demonstrate a high percentage of reliability.
The Commissioner turned around and spoke up for the first time since Bertone had entered the office.
“Did you measure how deep the footprints were on the ground?”
Bertone looked at the Superintendent, embarrassed, almost as if he were seeking his support against an unfair accusation. Then he looked at Capuzzo with a hint of bewilderment.
“Excuse me, in what sense?”
It was clear that he had no idea what the Commissioner was driving at and was going on the defensive. Capuzzo came away from the window and went over to the man he was addressing at that moment.
“I was simply asking you how deep the prints of the dead man’s shoes were on the ground.”
“Oh, well, I couldn’t tell you. But I don’t see what …”
Capuzzo cut him off with a wave of his hand.
“There’s a reason why I’m asking you this. If it weren’t for that head wound, everything would be clear enough. Nevertheless there’s that detail that I’m not entirely at ease with, despite the signs of slipping, the blood-stained rock and all the rest. Everything seems too simple even.”
He paused and then added, maybe only to himself.
“Too simple …”
Now both the Superintendent and Bertone watched him in silence, waiting to see what was stirring in the head of that man who was speaking and moving about the room as if they were no longer present.
“Let’s formulate a theory, as far-fetched as you like. Far-fetched but not impossible. Let’s imagine that the guy gets there accompanied by someone who obviously remains in the car, on the passenger side. Or in the back seat, it doesn’t matter. As soon as they stop, this hypothetical passenger knocks Bertolino out with a rock that he’s brought with him, and when he’s no longer able to react, takes off his shoes and puts them on. He ties a rope around his neck, hoists the body over his shoulder, carries it to the tree and hangs him without any problem. Bertolino had a rather slight build and it would not have been an impossible job for a strapping man. Then, walking backwards in his own footprints, he goes back to the car and gets two pieces of cardboard or something like that. Laying them on the ground, he’s able to move about as he pleases without leaving any prints. He stages the bit about slipping, and places the rock he used to strike his victim on the ground. Using the same method he returns to the tree and puts the shoes he had taken off back on the dead man. Still using the cardboard, he goes away, leaving not a trace.”
Capuzzo finally looked up at his audience, as if only at that moment did he recall having one.
He directed his gaze at Bertone, catching an astonished expression.
“In your opinion, would all this be possible?”
“Well, in theory, yes. But …”
The Commissioner interrupted him again. Quietly and without a trace of authority, but holding firm to his position.
“Fine. If it’s possible, I ask that you check to see if the prints left on the ground by the victim’s shoes correspond in depth to those left by a man of his weight or if we can theorize that they were left by a man carrying another man on his back. Is it too much to ask?”
For a moment poor Bertone found himself wearing the expression of a man who comes out of the noon Mass on Sunday and realizes he’s naked. Then he chose to replace this expression with the faint condescension of someone who knows he’s dealing with a whacko.
“All right. We’ll check.”
Without waiting for anything further, the director of the crime lab took his leave from those present and left the office. He knew that someone in that room had just made a fool of himself. And in any case he didn’t want to be there when it was clear who it was.
As soon as the door closed behind him, there was that split second of silence in the air that always precedes significant moments.
Then Superintendent Arnaldo Vanni looked Commissioner Marco Capuzzo right in the eye.
“As I was listening to you speak, a thought came to me.”
Capuzzo waited in silence to hear what would come next.
“I suspect that you are not the right person for the position you hold.”
Still Capuzzo remained silent, his gaze merely taking on a note of interest.
The Superintendent went straight to the point.
“If what you’ve just theorized is true, it’s not right for you to be merely a Commissioner. You would deserve much more. If it were just a fantasy, in that case too the role of Commissioner would not be right for you …”
Arnaldo Vanni, Asti Superintendent, paused for effect. He was a man of the world and knew well how to rouse the attention of those he spoke with.
“You would have all the recognition you deserve as a script writer.”
Capuzzo didn’t need to come up with a suitable reply. Someone knocked at the door and immediately afterward Lombardo made his entrance into the room. He was surprised by the presence of the Superintendent. He stopped beside the open door, uncertain, a manila folder in his hand.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t …”
“It’s all right, Lombardo. What is it?”
“I have the file on that Lucio Bertolino. He has prior convictions.”
Capuzzo held out his hand to the agent.
“Let me see.”
The agent crossed the room and handed the Commissioner the folder he had in his hand. Capuzzo opened it and briefly scanned the contents. Then he pulled out a page and read it with particular attention.
“That’s why I thought I knew him.”
“What do you mean?”
Capuzzo raised his eyes to the Superintendent. He looked at him but it was clear that his mind was already elsewhere.
“I mean that in addition to the matter of the prints, there’s another curious thing to note about this Bertolino.”
Intentional or not, his pause was much more effective than that of the Superintendent a short while ago.
“It’s not so much about how he died, but where he died.”
5
From his balcony window, Mario Savelli stood gazing out at the small piazza below his house. Piazza Medici was certainly one of the most beautiful spots in Asti’s historic center. All the houses were of the same period, restored as they should be to keep them that way. Nothing was out of place. To his right was a red brick tower constructed in the period between the thirteenth and fourteenth century, which gave the overall scene a noteworthy aspect. There was a time when he had stood at that balcony accompanied by his wife and son and together they had lovingly looked out at that small panorama inscribed between the walls that enclosed the city’s rooftops above.
Then cancer had taken his wife away, and his son …
He came away from the window, which connected the balcony to a room that was at the same time a library and TV room. He moved into the adjoining room, a much larger living room whose prominent feature was a shiny black Steinway grand piano. He shifted the stool and sat down. He waited a moment before opening the lid that encased the keys like a coffer. Savelli liked that image. The ivory and black like precious jewels from which sprang, depending on skill and mastery, that great gift to mankind that was music.
When he was young he had been part of a band, a a combo, as they called them then. Then without any regrets he had abandoned his career as a musician for the more levelheaded one of banker. He knew he did not possess the talent necessary to go beyond local circles, but his passion, without any frustration, had remained. When the opportunity arose, he bought that piano as a tribute to a career he had never had and played for anyone who cared to listen to him, or just for himself.
Like now.
He played an ascending scale as if to check the tuning. He arranged the score of “Rhapsody in Blue” on the stand in front of him. He had
just placed his hands on the keyboard when he heard the doorbell ring.
In advance of the housekeeper, he went to open the door himself. Another ring. It was an inconsequential sound, normal, everyday. But, when he found the vigorous figure of Commissioner Capuzzo framed in the doorway, he knew immediately that this was not a day like any other.
“Good day, Mr Savelli.”
“Good day, Commissioner.”
Between them lay the silence of words not spoken, concealed within the clamor of all the words they had been forced to say at one time.
“I need to speak with you a moment. May I come in?”
“Of course.”
Savelli stepped aside. The Commissioner came in and took a look around without seeming to. The house was as he remembered it, the house he had once entered in very painful circumstances. Elegant, substantial, luminous. Furnished with the warmth that only affluence and good taste together with love could provide.
He took off the jacket he was wearing and Savelli hung it on the coat rack opposite the entrance. Then he followed his host along the corridor to the room where he had been at a time both of them would rather forget. Savelli took a seat in a leather armchair with the window behind him. He gestured Capuzzo toward the chair opposite him.
“Please, sit down.”
The Commissioner sat down and didn’t think he should beat around the bush. He knew what kind of person he was dealing with and didn’t consider it necessary.
“Lucio Bertolino is dead.”
Against his will he found himself emphasizing the words more than he should. And watching for the other man’s reaction more closely than he would have liked.
Savelli remained impassive. As if the news weren’t just hours or days old, but years.
“I know. I heard it on the news report.”
He paused as if undecided whether or not to add something more. Then he decided that the answer to his interior question was yes.
“I can’t say I’m sorry about it.”
The Commissioner kept silent. Even if the man hadn’t said it, he was certain that would be how he felt.
“How did he die?”
“A truffle hunter found him hung from a tree.”
“Suicide?”
“It would seem so. We’re not one hundred per cent sure.”
Capuzzo gave Savelli time to consider this. To realize, while savoring and appreciating the fact, that in either case a kind of justice had intervened, be it human or divine.
“Did he suffer?”
“I don’t know.”
“If he didn’t suffer, I’m sorry to hear it. If he did suffer, I’m sorry he didn’t suffer more.” Capuzzo ignored this merciless epitaph. He had heard others over the course of his career. They were the voices of people who no matter how much time had passed would never leave behind one iota of pain, victims of memory as well as of violence and circumstances. He changed the subject and his tone.
“I didn’t feel it was necessary to summon you to Police Headquarters, but this meeting between the two of us had to take place somewhere. I think you understand me.”
Mario Savelli nodded his head imperceptibly. He added words that weren’t needed.
“Of course. I understand.”
“So then, I don’t think you will have any problem telling me where you were last night, say between nine and midnight.”
“No problem at all. Would you like some coffee?”
The Commissioner did not take the question as a diversionary tactic, a brief interval to put off the moment of having to respond. He took it as a small fulfillment of a desire. He could really use some coffee.
“Sure.”
A Filipino woman materialized at the door, as if evoked by the mere word “coffee”.
“Ghita, will you make us two espressos, please?”
As if by tacit accord, they remained silent, each absorbed in his own thoughts, until the housekeeper returned carrying a tray with two demitasse cups. She set the tray down in front of them and went away in silence, gliding soundlessly on the cloth slippers she was wearing.
When the Commissioner raised his cup, Savelli finally spoke.
“My day was extremely simple yesterday. I arrived from Turin by train in the late afternoon. I would guess toward evening. Since the last time we saw each other, a few things have changed. Now they say that I’ve become a rather important manager of my institution and I work in Turin.”
Capuzzo understood that there was no egotism behind those words. Only a trace of bitter self-irony, to hide the distress of a man who felt he had lost everything that was worth living for. And who had thrown himself into his work to delude himself that his life still had purpose.
“I didn’t feel like moving. I chose to commute. My life, my friends, my attachments are all here.”
He did not say “My wife and my son are buried here” but the Commissioner had the distinct impression that he was able to read those words in the mind of the man sitting before him. A man who calmly continued his account of what they both knew very well to be the statement of an alibi.
“I got home and took a shower. I played the piano for half an hour, as I do every evening.”
Savelli gestured toward the instrument that could be seen through the door. The Commissioner remembered noticing it earlier, at the time of his previous visit. Music must be a genuine passion for that man, at one time perhaps a reason for the family to gather together, now a refuge certainly from solitude.
“At eight-thirty I went out and from eight-forty-five until past midnight I was at a meeting of the Palio Committee of San Silvestro. When we were through, we went to Francese’s for a pizza. We stayed late because we started tasting some wine he recommended and to be honest when I got home I was slightly intoxicated. But not to the point of not being able to remember that I did not kill Lucio Bertolino.”
Savelli finally allowed himself a pause to drink his coffee. He uttered his next remark an instant before bringing the cup to his lips.
“Even though I would really have liked to be the one to do it.”
Capuzzo knew that Mario Savelli was a lonely man. And now that justice had been done, in one way or another, perhaps he would be even more alone.
“Commissioner, I understand. I mean, I understand the reason why you came to see me. I had a more than valid motive to hang that bastard from a tree, not once but a hundred times.”
He paused, enough to clear his mind. He had probably pursued that thought as a much more concrete plan numerous times in the past.
Savelli roused himself and set the cup on the tray with a faint clink of china. He rested against the back of the armchair. He stared once more into the eyes of the police officer with whom he was now speaking as if to a friend.
“You see, Commissioner Capuzzo, I’ve always been a guarantist of the law, a fervent upholder of the principle that it’s better to have a guilty man go free than put an innocent man in prison. At present however we have gradually lapsed into the theater of the absurd. Everyone is so concerned that no one touches Cain, forgetting an important thing.”
Another pause. Cold as a tombstone.
“Justice for Abel.”
The Commissioner looked at his hands a moment, before replying.
“Speaking of which, there’s an odd detail that perhaps the news reports did not mention. I don’t know if it was a coincidence or not, but Lucio Bertolino was found hung a few hundred yards from the curve where your son died four years ago.”
Capuzzo would never be entirely certain of it, but for an instant he had the distinct impression of having seen the fleeting suggestion of a smile in the other man’s eyes.
6
The Commissioner found himself back in Piazza Medici with a bit of confusion in his head. It was the confusion that always clogged the thoughts of a policeman engaged in pursuing a slippery hunch.
The evening before, reading through the file on Lucio Bertolino, an old matter had turned up, one which had led him
to the interrogation he had just concluded. That dubious individual had always been a local felon, a figure who was more sleazy than criminal. The small stuff of suspended sentences, petty theft, charges of harassment by women who wanted nothing to do with him and his pressing attentions. And judging from his physical looks, no one could blame them. All in all a character much more suitable for intence psychiatric observation than for detention in a penal institution. In fact he had never been convicted of anything serious, until he decided to attempt a big leap, to make his entrance into the world of real criminals.
Almost four years ago, with two accomplices, desperate delinquents like him, he had attempted to rob a post office in a town near Asti. They were fleeing after having snatched some small change, and after a few kilometers, because of their speed, the driver lost control of the car as they entered a curve. And struck a car, head-on, that was coming in the opposite direction.
The driver of the other car died instantly. He was twenty years old and his name was Paolo Savelli. The son of the man he had just finished speaking with.
That death caused quite a sensation because the boy, a brilliant physics student, was a promising young man in the world of science and culture, and not just nationally. Bertolino availed himself of summary procedure and his lawyer, through plea bargaining and clemency, managed to get him off with just under three years.
Once again the Commissioner was forced to recognize the incredible irony of life. There was every likelihood that, if he were still in jail, the guy would still be alive now. From there, his thoughts returned to the man he had just left. He didn’t know if Mario Savelli was a believer or not. If not, even if he wasn’t convinced that the ways of the Lord are infinite, he must certainly be thinking that at times they can be infinitely winding.
He lit a cigarette and started across the piazza. Lombardo had parked the police car on the other side, in front of a bar in the shade of the tower overlooking the square.
The Mammoth Book Best International Crime Page 4