A Woman Much Missed

by Valerio Varesi

  “Unfortunately, I’m not making anything of it. But suppose someone had tried their hand at blackmail, maybe even Ghitta herself.”

  Angela looked sceptical. “Why would she want to risk cutting off a source of revenue? After all, there was no great effort involved for her. All she had to do was prepare a couple of rooms, take care that the various couples never ran into each other, change the linen afterwards and occasionally make a meal with the excellent local produce of her mountain village. That’s all there was to it.”

  The commissario took out a cigar, cut off the tip and stuck it in his mouth without lighting it, purely for the pleasure of rolling it about between his teeth and tongue. “It was Fadiga who put these cuttings aside for me. He says he often sees photographs of the men who used to go to the pensione in the papers. These are the first that he found.”

  “And they won’t be the last.”

  Soneri bent over his plate of tripe and began to dip his bread into it. “If only I knew where Fernanda was,” he muttered to himself, now convinced that he was responsible for having got himself into the hole he was in. If only he had been willing to meet her, if only they had recognised each other and broken the ice which had formed over the years due to their different roles in life, perhaps she would have provided some valuable clues for understanding what lay behind Ghitta’s death. Had she not come to see him and no-one else? He would have been spared all this rummaging about in his memory. Everything was down to that initial error.

  “You can’t change what’s happened, so you’re just wasting time going over it. If you were a writer, you could score out a page and rewrite it, but in life there’s no going back,” Angela said, lifting a stick of celery to her mouth, but with little appetite.

  “All I want to do is work out precisely what took place. I’m trying to give meaning to things, and I proceed by making one attempt after another. I only deal with what is plausible.”

  “But at times you’re playing with risky hypotheses, as in the case of Ada. In your line of work, you should know how to control excesses of imagination.”

  “I have proof that she had a relationship with another man before me. There’s nothing to prove that she had an abortion, but I’m sure of it.”

  Angela threw her hands in the air and let them fall to her sides, as though facing the inevitable. “And supposing that’s true? What would it change?”

  “For so many years I’ve clung to an image of her that turns out to be far removed from the reality.”

  “Nothing can wipe out the happiness you enjoyed.”

  “No, Angela. It’s just that we’re made of nothingness, of illusions, appearances. Investigations do little more than reconstruct the mechanics of the facts, and that does not amount to much. Finding out who stuck the knife into Ghitta’s heart, the nature of the wound, its depth and the kind of haemorrhage, that’s no more than scraping the surface of a fact. But the killer’s motive, the dance of phantoms which produced the rage – these are matters which can never be fully understood. At best you can make an intuitive guess, but it’s a desperate business. The whole truth can never be grasped – our understanding of reality can only be partial.”

  Angela put down her fork, and sat lost in thought. Soneri’s speech had upset her, perhaps because she was thinking along the same lines herself. He had spoken with such merciless clarity. In spite of the bitterness with which he had expressed himself, she liked her commissario all the more for these outbursts, which showed him to be more sensitive and more vulnerable than he would like to admit.

  “One of these days I have to go to Rigoso. I want to understand the relationship Ghitta had with the people in the village,” Soneri said.

  “Will there be a hotel there? I’d love one of those old-fashioned country bedrooms with mismatched furniture and two chairs to hang your clothes over. Here, everybody goes to bed with everybody else, so couldn’t we just . . .” Angela burst our laughing.

  6

  HE LEFT HOME very early, at an hour when the morning frost made the hedgerows glisten, and when the swaying Christmas lights sent waves of golden brightness through the mist. The questura was almost deserted at that time, a situation he preferred. As he walked along the corridor, still heavy with the smell of cleaning products, he heard his office telephone ringing. He leapt into the darkened room, bumping into a chair and knocking over piles of papers. He was out of breath as he replied to a strong, firm voice on the other end – a voice more used to the pulpit. “It’s Friar Fiorenzo, and there’s someone here who would like to speak to you.”

  “I’m on my way,” he said simply. He knew who was waiting for him.

  He strode towards the piazza and as he crossed it the clock on the campanile in the Palazzo del Governatore struck seven. He entered the church by the side door, where the friar was waiting for him. Soneri exchanged understanding glances with him before looking along the benches at an elderly, somewhat corpulent, man, his leathery skin tanned by exposure to the sun in the fields.

  “How long has he been here?” he said quietly.

  “More than an hour. He arrived with a shift-worker who comes to the city every morning.”

  “Did you manage to hear his confession this time?”

  “I’ve taken care of his conscience. The rest is up to you.”

  Soneri picked his way along the rows of seats and only when he was beside him did the man turn abruptly, the way deaf people do. He smiled, revealing gaps among his long teeth, and held out a hand the colour of chestnut wood and resembling a tangle of roots.

  “My name is Ettore Chiastra, a friend of Ghitta’s.” His introduction was awkward, accompanied by a slight bow. Looking doubtfully at the elderly ladies who were moving silently about the naves of the church, he added, “I’ve been looking for you for two days.”

  “I thought it was Friar Fiorenzo you were after,” Soneri said.

  “Well, the things I have to say to him are of a different order from those I have to tell you.”

  “I’m interested in everything to do with Ghitta.”

  The old man gave a smile. “I doubt it. We’re talking about very private matters.”

  “When there’s a crime involved, it makes no difference.”

  “I don’t know if they’ve told you about me and Ghitta.”

  Soneri nodded. “There was some link-up,” he said, joining his index fingers together, “and you were a married man.”

  For a few moments Chiastra, with the air of a man trying to ward off a blow, remained silent. “So you know. Ghitta lived the life she did. I was part of it, in other words.”

  “Is that remorse? Is that why you were looking for Friar Fiorenzo?”

  “There’s a bit of remorse, yes, but there’s also the fact that my life has been knocked off course. You’ll know that . . .”

  Once again Soneri nodded in agreement. “After the scandal broke, when did you get back together?”

  “We never really lost touch. We carried on writing to each other during the period we were forced to stay apart.”

  “And more recently?”

  “Now I give her a hand looking after her business in Rigoso.”

  “Does she have property there as well?”

  The old man raised a hand as though the matter was completely obvious. “A great deal. Half the village is hers.”

  “And where did she get all that money?”

  “Where do you think? She didn’t need much to live on and what she earned she squirrelled away. And then there was that other factor.”

  “What other factor?”

  “Resentment. She never reconciled herself to the fact that the village had put her on the street. She couldn’t cope with being seen as someone who stole other women’s husbands. As a whore, in other words.”

  “Did she suppose she could restore her reputation?”

  “I don’t know. But not one of them has ever changed their opinion of her. Maybe that’s why she started buying up the whole village. Yo
u can hate the rich, but it’s not so easy to despise them.”

  “Houses?”

  “Many houses. She even bought a building with a bar, a boarding house and a doctor’s surgery. She went as far as renting offices to the town council. She was out for revenge for the way she had been treated. She once said, ‘They can say anything they like, but at the end of the day, it’s me they all come to’.”

  “She didn’t look like someone who had a head for business.”

  “You’re wrong there. She could sniff out business opportunities like a hunting dog going after a hare. She was on top of everything that was going on. You know that she went from house to house curing illnesses?”

  “Yes, she was the medicine woman,” Soneri said, with a touch of irony.

  Chiastra looked at him with a serious, worried expression. “You can believe what you want, but she cured everybody, otherwise they wouldn’t have been so afraid of her.”

  “I know. She threatened them, even as she healed them.”

  “She knew what to say. She was articulate, and she had a tongue that could cut glass.”

  “The same as the people in your town. What did they say when the two of you began to lord it over them?”

  “Nothing much, the same as before, but the difference was that this time we had the upper hand.” He paused for a moment before adding, “And anyway, money always makes everything more acceptable.”

  Soneri took out a cigar but as he was about to light it, the reproachful glance of an elderly woman in a black veil brought him back to himself and reminded him he was in a church.

  “Feel better now?” the commissario asked, gesturing towards the confessional. “You’ve offloaded all your regrets?”

  “It was high time for me to face facts and put things right. I don’t care much for my life now, but Ghitta was once young and pretty. She was lively and carefree, but I was a married man. To be frank, she had more to lose than me.”

  “And then there’s the question of the boy.”

  The old man was obviously taken aback for a moment, and slumped against his pew. “That was the worst mishap of all. If only he had been the same as the others.”

  “Who’s looking after him now?”

  “He was in an institution for a long time, until Ghitta bought him a house that was out of the way. The social workers bring him food, but he lives like a savage. I try to go and visit him every so often, but he drives me away. He believes he’s Mussolini’s son, and delivers speeches to the few people who pass by.”

  A couple of tourists paid the fifty centesimi to illuminate the church and Soneri’s eyes were immediately drawn to the chapel of Sant’Egidio. The sudden, unexpected burst of light changed the atmosphere and broke the intimacy of the conversation. After his momentary discomfort, Chiastra’s expression was once again calm and controlled. The commissario decided it was time to change the subject.

  “Ghitta used various nicknames for the people who came to her pensione. She wrote them down in a notebook I found in her bedroom, but I’ve no idea who they refer to,” Soneri said, handing the list to Chiastra.

  After laboriously putting on a pair of glasses, the man looked it over. “I’ve heard her use those names,” he said, returning the list with no apparent sign of emotion, “but I don’t know who these people were. Ghitta didn’t have complete confidence in anyone, not even me.” He seemed proud of this fact, and paused again before asking, “Are you sure there aren’t some names missing?” He pointed to the list with his calloused hand.

  Soneri looked again at the sheet of paper and reflected. “Could be. Do you remember any others?”

  “Chiastra took back the list. “There’s certainly one that’s not here.”

  “Who?”

  “Somebody known as Rosso, the Red. I don’t know who he is. I once heard Ghitta speak on the telephone to someone or other and call him by that name. I remember she seemed very uneasy.”

  Soneri thought it over. “Are you saying she was afraid?”

  “Perhaps. I’m not sure. She was agitated, let’s say. In all the years I’d known her I’d never seen her in such a state.”

  “How long ago did all this happen?”

  “Not long. Two months, perhaps. The cows had just come down from the mountains.”

  A pew behind them creaked, and Soneri turned to see an old woman moving away, muttering to herself because she had been disturbed by their whispering.

  “Was she in that state even later?”

  Chiastra stared at him and shook his head. “It’s obvious you didn’t know Ghitta. A real iron lady. After a quarter of an hour she’d forget everything.” He spoke admiringly.

  Was that why the murderer had been so cool? Ghitta was unafraid of any impending danger and was sure of her ability to control everyone around her. A whole world rotated around her – old students who had made their fortune, a village she had taken over, a circle of furtive, high-placed couples who relied on her discretion, not to mention girls and married women coping with unwanted pregnancies. Maybe the man who had killed her had nothing to do with these circles. But then there was that knife used in the slaughter of pigs.

  “Do you know Elvira Cadoppi?”

  Chiastra did not reply directly. “She has a room at the pensione.”

  “I gather she was the only permanent resident, because the rest . . .” Soneri said.

  The man made a circular motion with his hand in the air. “Ghitta got both the Cadoppis out of trouble, even if they hate her for it. They were up to their necks in debt, and they couldn’t pay their mortgage because their shop ran into difficulties. Ghitta paid everything off and took their house. That’s normal, isn’t it? She only took the walls, you might say. She let them live in it for a nominal rent, but she made Elvira come to the city to help her. She even found her a job as a sales assistant.”

  “It was all so easy for her.”

  “Ghitta knew a lot of people. And some of the guests of the pensione went on to become very influential”

  “What kind of help did Elvira give her?”

  “Cleaning up, various errands.”

  “She told me she never stopped working.”

  “Don’t believe her. She used to give herself airs and graces, making out that she did whatever she wanted, but she was under Ghitta’s thumb. She knew Ghitta could throw her and her family out the house at Rigoso, or could get her dismissed from her job.”

  “Doesn’t she live in Capoponte?”

  “I think her man lives there. It’s not her house at all.” Chiastra gave a snigger. “There’s so much nonsense being talked.”

  “Who is her man?”

  “Who could say? She’s had so many I’ve lost count. Anyway, I don’t know the younger generation.”

  All of a sudden an organ struck up and Soneri saw a priest cross the transept in front of the statue of Sant’Uldarico. The old women got to their feet and Soneri realised for the first time just how many of them there were. “Are you going to visit Ghitta in the mortuary?” he asked Chiastra.

  Chiastra gave a nod before turning away, stumbling as he walked and making the sign of the cross before the high altar.

  Soneri left the church without seeing Friar Fiorenzo. Now that the lights were off, the city seemed to him as dull as a ballerina without her sequins. He walked smartly in the direction of Via Saffi, and stopped at No. 35. The shisha bar was already open, with the usual uproar spilling out onto the street. He went in, but the stale smell of tobacco, the aromas and incense make him feel an outsider. Cartons of cigarettes and lighters were on sale at a table, while in a corner a thin man was cutting hair and shaving his fellow countrymen, who were seated in a row waiting, as though in a surgery. Mohammed was leaning on the bar, smoking quietly, heedless of the crush around him. Everyone seemed to know what to do and where to go, independently of him, so did no more than mark in a notebook what each one had taken. His wife attended to everything else.

  Soneri showed him the photog
raphs of Pecorari and Avanzini. Mohammed looked at them intently, but only for a few seconds. “Many times,” he said, pointing to the door of the pensione. “Even twice a day.”

  “Who did they go with?”

  Mohammed gave a malicious smile. “How should I know? The couples never arrived together. One first, then the other later. Sometimes they would come along, ring the buzzer, talk over the intercom, turn away and come back ten minutes later.”

  “What happened in the meantime?”

  “Sometimes another person would turn up. Or else nothing happened.”

  “A woman, perhaps?”

  “No. As I was saying, often no-one would come at all.”

  The commissario lit his cigar and thought this over. He was being given so many contradictory signals and could not decipher any of them. Mohammed’s voice brought him back to himself. “The couples who want to keep out of sight are very careful. Don’t forget that I used to work in a hotel. In hotels, people like to book separate rooms as though they don’t know each other and arrive at different times, understand? Maybe they’d told the old woman to keep them apart. Maybe some of her clients preferred the others who used her premises not to know about them.”

  “What about the ones who came on their own?”

  Mohammed gave a smile with his ebony eyes and shrugged. “It didn’t happen very often. Elvira and that other guy, the one in the strange clothes.” As he spoke, he made little effeminate movements. “They did come and go by themselves.”

  “Did you see them a lot?”

  Mohammed nodded. “The last time was yesterday evening. Elvira also used to go to collect rents for Ghitta.”

  Soneri said nothing until a bearded Pakistani, speaking halting Italian, stuck a tray of lighters under his nose. Mohammed brushed him off with a peremptory wave. “You didn’t know Ghitta was so rich, did you? She didn’t seem to be,” he said with a malicious smile.

  The commissario was no longer concerned with that but with what he remembered of the district and of how different that memory was from the reality now opening out before him. For him it was a process of continuous, painful discovery, and he realised that behind the pain there lay a defeat. For a moment he had the impression of having lost his centre, the fixed point to which he had always been anchored. He tried to chase away that anguished sensation and succeeded only with an effort. Mohammed continued talking, but his voice seemed to him like a part of a discourse that had no sense.