The Dark Valley: A Commissario Soneri Mystery (Commissario Soneri 2)

by Valerio Varesi

  The carabinieri had switched off their torches so as not to provide their enemy with an easy target. They appeared to have spread out in the woods, waiting. Everything settled into an unnatural calm. Not even the hoot of an owl could be heard. They too had been silenced by the shots cutting through the air.

  “If they get too far off the path, one of those boys is going to get lost, and if the Woodsman finds him, he could finish him off with a single punch,” Delrio said.

  “Do you remember that time at the San Matteo fair when he stunned a cow with one blow between the horns?” Rivara said.

  At that moment, the firing started again, this time further up the mountain, among the chestnut trees at Campogrande.

  “He’s moved. He wants them to know he can attack them anywhere he likes,” Maini said, his voice almost drowned out by a new volley. The bullets seemed to fly across the valley, a whistling sound followed by a bang.

  “That’s the Woodsman’s Beretta alright,” Volpi said.

  He was presumably firing in the air, since his objective seemed to be to frighten them, not to hit them. Bullets sailed through the trees, snapping off branches as they passed, and Soneri imagined a shower of bark falling on the crouching carabinieri. Suddenly, they returned fire from several different positions, all aiming in the direction where they believed the Woodsman was. They had allowed him to shoot at will, but they were now obeying orders to open fire in unison, like an execution squad. The valley shook to the terrible roar of the guns, the woodland was lit up by brief flashes as rifle fire was concentrated on a ten-metre range where the breaking of branches and the thud of bullets against tree trunks was the only sound heard.

  “They’re focusing on the one zone, but they’re covering a wide front. They hope they’ll get him that way,” Delrio said.

  There was a sinister silence, a lull before another storm, and then an explosion, this time from some hundred metres above the carabiniere position. The wind from the blast once again ripped through the village at gale force. The Woodsman had lowered his sights and was firing into the woods. The carabinieri replied immediately, but with staggered shots which sounded like firecrackers. It was now a skirmish among the trees, fought blindly, the outcome dependent on the vagaries of chance. The trees alone provided a certain target, the wood crumbling as each bullet impacted.

  Soneri shook his head. “He couldn’t have done anything more stupid.”

  The others turned to him in disbelief, and for the first time he had the sensation of really being a policeman.

  “You’d have to be there in the middle of it,” Rivara said, in an almost hostile tone.

  “All he had to do was keep away from them. He could have led them on a merry dance for months.”

  “They won’t let him go back home and his wife is ill,” Volpi said. This news plainly came as a surprise to the others.

  “The Woodsman’s made that way. When he’s in a rage, he behaves like a charging boar,” Rivara said.

  “His wife is seriously ill.” The speaker again was Volpi.

  “Isn’t her daughter there to look after her?” Soneri said.

  “She’s doing all she can, but with the carabinieri always in the house … She has got to go regularly to the hospital to be kept under observation.” Volpi was keen to let it be known that he was well informed, and the group listened attentively. He spoke slowly, choosing his words with the same patience as a hunter stalking his prey. He was dressed in a heavy green jacket with many pockets, which made him look stouter.

  They stayed there another quarter of an hour, listening for more exchanges of fire. There might have been bodies lying in the woods, but none of them cared. More time went by, then they heard trucks starting up and they made out the headlights shining over the reservoir. The carabinieri drove swiftly down the path through the woods and accelerated when they reached the road. The vehicles came into the piazza at speed, one behind the other. As they passed, everyone could see an officer in the front of one of the trucks holding a bandage to his forehead. Rivara announced that he saw blood flowing. “There was one taken to the hospital this morning, and now he’s shot another one,” he said. The vehicles did not head for the hospital, but drew up at the police station, ignored by the few bystanders.

  The group outside the Rivara broke up, one after the other drifting off without the usual goodbyes. Indifference and passivity seemed to have infected the community, and a dull hatred lurked among the cluster of houses. In the centre of the village, the Olmo played host to its veterans, spectators at a drama whose latest act was unknown to them. When the commissario passed by, Magnani appeared at the door. He stubbed his cigarette out on the road, giving the impression he had been listening to all that had been said until then.

  “Fine battle, eh?” he said.

  “It’s war now.”

  “If you know that captain, tell him to steer clear of the Woodsman. His chances of capturing him are slight, but the chances of Gualerzi putting a bullet in some carabiniere’s head are considerable. If you tread on his toes, he won’t think twice.”

  “I’ll be sure to pass the word on, but the Woodsman is doing one crass thing after another.”

  “One good thing he did do, get rid of Paride.”

  “If it was him. But he had good reason.”

  “I agree the whole business is odd. Unless Rodolfi really did ruin him.”

  “He did the same to a lot of people.”

  “It was different with the Woodsman. There was nothing about Palmiro he didn’t know. He could have landed him in the shit any time he wanted.”

  “Because he went to bed with his son’s wife?”

  “Lusts, desires, nothing more.” Magnani was not interested in this aspect. “There were more important things. It seems there was some kind of pact between Palmiro and Gualerzi. They were both men of the woods, and men of that sort understand each other by smell alone.”

  “He did fix his daughter up with a job at the Rodolfi factory.”

  “I have an idea they used to meet on Montelupo and when they were there, they went back to being boys together. When you get right down to it, Palmiro had no idea what his business had become. Finance, stock exchange … these words reduced him to a babbling wreck. His son more or less shut him out of all the dealings, and he was none too pleased about that.”

  “From what I hear, they didn’t even seem like members of the same family.”

  “Paride took after his mother. She was frail, fearful, very nervous and had never enjoyed good health. In her last years, she wouldn’t even sleep with her husband, because she couldn’t cope with his colossal virility. They say Palmiro was a bull of a man.”

  By some sort of conditioned reflex which pitched the brutal reality against the gentle image, the Rodolfi trademark, with its smiling pork butcher and the pig at his side, came back to Soneri. As the commissario felt many of his most deeply held convictions and memories disintegrate, Magnani, standing with the door ajar behind him, went on: “Don’t get the idea that it was all plain sailing for Palmiro, as they believe here in the village. Nor was it all Paride’s fault, even if he wasn’t exactly guiltless.”

  “It’s always easier to be forgiving about times past, and in many ways Palmiro belonged to a different world.”

  “I’m not nostalgic about the past. I know what it is to suffer hunger and poverty. What Palmiro’s story proves is that the arrogant and unscrupulous always come out on top. Like in wartime.”

  “Around here he was treated as a saint.”

  “By people with small minds, or those who were dependent on him. That’s all there is to it. They make out they don’t remember how he made his money. He dealt with both the Fascists and the partisans. He was an expert at keeping a foot in both camps. He used to do what the immigrants do today, black marketeering. He never did drugs, just foodstuffs. He had a stranglehold over the peasants, but once the Americans turned up, there he was hand in glove with them. He even betrayed a couple of boys
in their twenties to the Fascists, in ’44. Not people from around here, because he would have been wary of the villagers.”

  Soneri lit a cigar to calm himself as Magnani continued, “What’s at the root of the Rodolfi fortune? Greed, bullying and a fair bit of outright theft. The same as with anybody who makes money in this world. They’re treated with respect, people grovel out of fear, and all their dirty tricks are forgotten. But then, even with the most beautiful animal at large in these woods, slit open their bellies and what do you find? Gore and shit.”

  “Until recently, the Rodolfis were still up to what you call ‘dirty tricks’.”

  “They all are. The Rodolfis were caught out. Do you really believe that other companies are not up to their eyes in debt, and that they don’t get up to the same kind of underhand dealings? The difference is that they’re cleverer and have a little more style.”

  “Or more effective political cover.”

  “Politicians don’t count for anything any more. Take Aimi. He was no more than a middle man, but he had to flee the village like a thief. Maybe the real mistake the Rodolfis made was to bet on politics, and to think that politicians were still major players. They gargle ideas and ideologies in public, but it’s cash that counts nowadays. Financiers, bankers and industrialists, these are the men who pay the piper, and they toss a few crumbs to the politicians to keep them quiet, the way you toss a dog a bone.”

  “The Woodsman was one of the partisans and he must have known all this.”

  Magnani nodded, deep in thought. His face was flushed, perhaps because what he had been saying had made him agitated. They both remained silent, until the wife of the old man who had been Palmiro’s assistant came down the street, pushing the wheelchair

  “Here’s another one who saw it all but found it convenient to keep his mouth shut,” Magnani said. He stood out of the way to let them pass. The husband, forcibly removed by his wife from the company of his peers, was cursing her loudly, but she remained impassive. The commissario helped her lift the wheelchair over the entrance, bending down so that his face was level with man’s as he did so.

  “Give me a cigar,” the man whispered.

  His wife intervened peremptorily. “He’s not allowed to smoke. Doctor’s orders.”

  She spoke as though her husband were not there, but he persisted. Soneri got the impression that if he had been able to rise, he would have slapped her. Without warning, he changed the subject. His mind leaped from one topic to another, particularly concerning the past.

  “If you want to know where Palmiro used to go, I’ll tell you,” the old man said. The subject was plainly an obsession with him. The commissario could not tell if he was aware that his ex-employer was dead. Perhaps at that moment he had forgotten.

  “We used to go to Malpasso, Badignana, then on to Monte Matto and Bragalata in summer, if we had time or if we were out hunting. In the evening, we would sometimes walk along the Croce path with the dogs. That was a shorter walk,” he mumbled, the saliva running over his chin.

  With the zeal of a nurse, his ever-vigilant wife bent over to clean round his mouth, cutting off the final words and provoking a fresh spasm of impotent rage. She proceeded to push the wheelchair forward, preventing further conversation, but as she was doing so, the old man turned his head to the side and managed to utter one more sentence which, from what he heard, Soneri worked out had something to do with full baskets. He took it from the pride with which the old man expressed himself that they had both been excellent hunters.

  Magnani shook his head. “It’d be far better to end it all rather than live like that, a burden to yourself and those around you.”

  Soneri was thinking of Palmiro’s walks and of the fact that he had not stopped going to the woods even when he had been left on his own, totally isolated inside his company and alone in life, apart from the Woodsman with whom he continued to have mysterious, fleeting encounters, and Manuela, with whom he shared a bed.

  “They should give him a pill. I’m sure he’d prefer that if he was still lucid. I’ve no doubt he would do the same as his old boss if he could,” Magnani said. He turned on his heel, pushed open the door and without another word went back into the bar.

  Soneri walked through the village to the Scoiattolo. He found Sante, pacing anxiously up and down in the courtyard. “There’s that carabiniere in there waiting for you,” he announced.

  “The maresciallo?”

  “Not him. The officer, his superior.”

  “Bovolenta, the captain.”

  “That’ll be the one. I asked him when Palmiro’s funeral is to take place, and he told me the magistrate has now given authorisation. It could be tomorrow afternoon, but they’ve nothing to do with it any more. It’s the family’s responsibility, and if you ask my opinion, they’ll want it done quietly.”

  Bovolenta got up when he saw Soneri come in. He seemed exhausted, but was keen to maintain his military bearing. “If I’m ever to have you as my guest at dinner, I’ve got to come to your den.”

  “After a day like you’ve had, you must have something really important to tell me. By the way,” Soneri added hurriedly, “how are the wounded officers?”

  Bovolenta put on a serious expression. He was clearly very worried. “One is in hospital. Nearly lost his forearm. The other man is only concussed. He was hit on the forehead by a huge branch.”

  “So all in all, it wasn’t too bad, considering the number of shots that were exchanged.”

  “He’s mad. He seemed to be everywhere at once. He was out to kill us all.”

  “Mad he may be, but he didn’t want to kill anyone. He was deliberately firing into the air.”

  Sante came over to ask what they wanted to eat. Bovolenta chose the anolini in brodo, and Soneri did the same.

  “We’ve lost face over this.”

  “Don’t look at it that way. It’s not a duel, and your honour’s not at stake. The Woodsman’s on his home ground and Montelupo is difficult terrain.”

  “A lot of them don’t want to go back up there. They’re scared stiff. A couple of my men went completely berserk and started screaming. I think he heard it.”

  Soneri tried to think back to when he had been in a similar position, with bullets whistling around him and not much cover. He remembered an armed robbery in Milan when huge bullets pierced the doors of his Alfa Romeo, leaving the shattered metal looking like a cheese grater. The shots had missed him by a whisker. Half a degree more one way or the other and he would not be there now addressing an angry policeman.

  “You’re not likely to take home any prizes from this hunting trip,” the commissario warned him.

  Bovolenta looked at him and was close to agreeing, but he said, “I have no choice.”

  “Are you quite sure it was the Woodsman?”

  “His wife’s seriously ill with diabetes and he needs to get back the money he lent the elder Rodolfi to pay for her treatment. Does that not seem to you motive enough?”

  “Then why didn’t he kill Palmiro?”

  “Who says he didn’t try? Who else could have been responsible for all those shots fired in recent days? And anyway, Palmiro did away with himself.” The captain dipped his spoon deep into the plate and picked out some of the anolini from the soup. He must have gone without his lunch, since only hunger could have made him forget military etiquette to that extent. After a few minutes, he cleaned his mouth and looked Soneri in the face. “You’re not convinced, are you?”

  The commissario, his mouth full, shrugged.

  “I came here to ask you for some advice,” Bovolenta said.

  “I don’t really know much about it.”

  “We cannot continue to move about in a herd, as we did today. Gualerzi would hear us from a long way off and he’d have all the time in the world to hide until we got within range. We’ll have to use his tactics, hit and run. The problem is we don’t know where to find him.”

  “There I can’t help you. There’s not a man around he
re, even if he knows the woods, who would know where to find the Woodsman.”

  “He must have enemies.”

  “That may be, but no-one would dare stand up against him. Anyway, everybody in the village is on his side.”

  “He’s mad and he has to be stopped,” Bovolenta said, stretching across the table to grab the bottle of Gutturnio, an act of rudeness which definitively ended any pretence at good manners. “A desperate lunatic who’s playing his last card.”

  “Gualerzi’s always been like that. He’s a savage with a code of honour.”

  “I don’t believe he has the slightest interest in honour. He’s desperate and capable of anything.”

  “You’re wrong there. Granted he can be ruthless, but he’s not the bastard you make him out to be.”

  “In the past, maybe not, but he’s got cancer. Did you know that?”

  Soneri stopped and would have liked to say that was the only thing which would make him surrender, but he had no wish to irritate the captain further. “How do you know that?” he said.

  “We searched his house and we found the tests.”

  “If that’s so, what’s the point of trying to ambush him? All you have to do is wait.”

  “If we were monks, we could, but we’re carabinieri.”

  “I don’t see any other way out. Don’t kid yourselves that the Woodsman is going to let himself be captured like a common criminal. That’s one thing he’s not.”

  “He shot at us.”

  “If you carry on pursuing him, he’ll take one of you out. But he’ll keep the last bullet for himself.”

  Bovolenta appeared deep in thought. For a few seconds there was a brightness in his eyes, before weariness made them cloud over again.

  “Listen to me,” Soneri said. “Scale down your operations to patrolling Montelupo. Leave him in charge of the territory, and he might even come round. Otherwise it’s going to end badly. He’s not a man for compromises, not even with himself.”

  “If it were up to me … Headquarters have decreed … I obey orders.”

  The commissario felt some sympathy for Bovolenta. He was subject to the unsubtlety of higher command, to a primitive vision which divided the world into two, friends and enemies, victories and defeats. “Tell your superiors that to wring one chicken’s neck there’s no need to knock the whole hen-run down,” he said, in an attempt to reduce the tension.