A Woman Much Missed
Page 25
Soneri drew a deep breath intimating understanding, and went on his way. At last the streets appeared empty, and there wafted from the grocery stores a scent of salami that mingled with the mist. He had never felt so alone as he did that Christmas, not even on the one which fell immediately after Ada’s death. He felt as though he had undergone an amputation. He had an image of himself as a malformed man, a warped, unrecognisable being like a war veteran who feels pain from a phantom limb.
*
“You look as though you’re thoroughly annoyed with someone or other,” Angela said to him later, looking at his sombre face.
He made no reply. He chose to speak only a few moments later, when Angela had disappeared into the kitchen.
“I wish I knew who to get annoyed with,” he said, feeling the same powerlessness as someone swatting away a swarm of mosquitoes in the dark. Too many things had slipped away from him in those years, including an important part of Ada’s life. This was no small matter for a commissario.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Angela said, breaking into his thoughts, “but it’s water under the bridge now. We all have a duty to move on.”
The problem was that everything appeared to Soneri to have already moved on, well past him. He observed other people with the detachment of a person observing an army of ants. The world seemed to him framed in unbearable futility: Ghitta with her pig-headed determination to triumph over the contempt of her townspeople, Fornari oppressed by life under his father’s shadow to the point of joining a bunch of hapless criminals, Elvira permeated by proletarian pettiness, Cornetti lacerated by irrepressible passions, and Chiastra dying slowly of an excessive fidelity which age had not tempered. They all seemed to him like circus clowns, as Marta Bernazzoli had described them, and they all lived in the dimension of the absurd, murderers and victims alike, with nothing to distinguish one from the other.
As he ruminated in this vein, Soneri started smiling again, but with a distant expression that frightened Angela. “I’ve never seen you like this,” she said.
“You’re quite right. I’ve never felt this way before.”
At that moment, the grotesque looked to him like the symbol of the world and even of himself. He was no longer moored to that Cartesian rock of self-knowledge to which he had always clung, from which the Ghitta case had definitively severed him.
“Every crime I have ever had to investigate has slapped me in the face with the futility of our existence. Until now, I have always tried to make light of it, but this Ghitta business . . . You know what’s behind it, don’t you?”
Angela looked hard at him without making any reply. She had no idea what to say. She would have liked to offer him consolation, but she risked making herself look ridiculous. There were moments when silence seemed more appropriate than any words. He understood how close Angela was to him, and the looks they exchanged were pregnant with meaning and with genuine intimacy. Soneri felt her firm, reassuring body, and he clasped her gratefully to him as though he had finally found the rock he had been searching for all those days spent wandering about in the greyness of the city and in the dark anxieties of the investigation. He experienced the same feeling later, seated at table, dining on what his woman had prepared for him.
“The only one missing from the roll-call is Fernanda,” Angela said.
He had forgotten all about her and had not even discussed her with Chillemi. Nor had Saltapico asked about the old woman.
“If you ask me, he’s killed her as well,” Angela said.
It came to Soneri that regrettably he was not altogether done with that troublesome case. “Now that the waters are calmer, maybe she’ll turn up again. If she was afraid before, she has no reason to be so now.”
“The rest of them are still around.”
“You mean the politicians and the businessmen? They’d never dirty their hands. They’ve too much to lose.”
“Shall we go to the Duomo at midnight?”
“I can’t bring myself to mingle with that bunch of hypocrites. Let’s go and find Fadiga. He’s got as much right to a happy Christmas as them.”
They walked along the white pavements. The frost was a substitute for the snow, which seemed unable to decide whether to fall or not. The mist hovered as still as water in a well over the deserted space around the Mercato della Ghiaia. Soneri stopped and looked around. They were in the centre of the piazza and in the greyness they could make out only the solid, dark outlines of the closed kiosks, nothing more.
“That’s our condition,” he declared, with a theatrical twirl which took Angela by surprise.
She gave a feeble smile, and to prevent them tumbling back into some mental cul de sac, she took him by the arm. “Come on, let’s find the way.”
*
He refused to sleep in Angela’s house. He did not want to get into the habit of fleeing, but wanted instead to familiarise himself once more with the house where he was going to have to start living again. Christmas morning, finally free of frenzy, had a proper holiday feel. The day crept in slowly, and the only change from the night lay in the altered colour of the mist. He went down and walked around the still sleeping city, passing close to the lighted shop windows. In one he saw a large Christmas tree hung with red lace knickers instead of the standard decorations, which made him think that to stare at shop windows it was necessary to have a policeman’s stomach.
The questura was still asleep when he arrived. The gate at Via Repubblica was closed so Soneri went round the back to Borgo della Posta, where a guard was on duty. The corridors were deserted, the offices locked, and only from the operations centre were any voices to be heard, and even there in subdued tones. When he got to his desk, he telephoned Juvara. “Happy Christmas,” he said, in a high-pitched voice.
The inspector sounded drowsy. “I’m trying to catch up on sleep. I haven’t had much time in bed recently.”
“We forgot all about Fernanda.”
“Do you think Fornari eliminated her as well?”
“Who knows? When the gentlemen in the Digos squad in Milan deign to send us a message, we might even be able to find out from the protagonist himself.”
“It’s the festive season now, commissario. Put your mind at rest and take it easy. It was us who solved the case, wasn’t it?”
“You’re right. We should take it easy. In a minute or two I’m going to shut up shop and head off.”
“O.K. then, and good wishes.”
“I’m going to need them,” Soneri said.
He started clearing up his desk and allowed himself to savour the peace of Christmas. He glanced over at the piles of foodstuffs gifted to the police, and thought he should pass them on to the Caritas food bank before it all went bad. He switched on his desk lamp and collapsed into his armchair. A quarter of an hour later, the main gate swung open to admit some official cars bringing dignitaries to offer seasonal greetings to the Prefect, who had come in specially for the occasion. It was at that moment that Soneri saw a figure appear and walk slowly in the direction of the fir trees. He stared closely at her, and as she passed among the trees he had the impression of reliving the scene from some days before, when everything started off.
Fernanda was wearing the same long overcoat, had the same weary gait and even the same floppy bag over her arm. The commissario waited for everything to unfold as though in a well-rehearsed script. His telephone rang and the guard told him an elderly lady wanted to speak to him.
“Send her up,” he said.
Shortly afterwards, Fernanda appeared before him with a face drained of all colour. “I threw the die, and it ended up in the square which sends you back to Go!” he said to her.
Fernanda looked at him with the expression of a deaf person who cannot quite grasp the words spoken. “Well, these days I’ve done the rounds, I can tell you,” she said.
She propped her walking stick against the desk as she had done on the previous occasion. The commissario noted that she was going through th
e same rigmarole.
“This morning I did agree to see you,” he said.
“If only you had done so a few days ago.”
“We wouldn’t have been able to save Ghitta in any case,” he said decisively.
“No, we couldn’t have saved her,” she agreed.
“Where have you been all this time?”
“Where do you think? Have a guess, Soneri.”
She used his name in a tone intended to emphasise their long-standing acquaintanceship. The commissario peered at her, and in the midst of the wrinkles on her face he saw a pair of deep-set, malicious eyes staring back at him.
“We’ve been searching for you everywhere. You might have explained to us . . .”
“You weren’t the only ones looking for me.”
“Who else?”
“Pitti, for one. Elvira sent him to find Ghitta’s various female ex-boarders because she thought I might have sought refuge with one of them.”
“Who else?”
“That young man, I think.”
“Andrea Fornari?”
“I knew as well as everyone else that some time ago he’d fallen into bad company. Was I supposed to hang about waiting for him? That’s exactly why I came to you, but all I found was that Juvara. He didn’t exactly inspire confidence. Could I trust myself to tell him everything? It would have been different with you. I knew you when you were a student. I think I can tell what people are made of.”
“Well, anyway, I came along. All you had to do was tell me.”
“You didn’t seem very interested. At my age, you need to be sure.”
Soneri thought that he really must have given the impression of not caring much about an old lady’s statement, only remembering later that he had known her. His curiosity had been aroused too late to get the situation back under control.
“Where did you go?” he asked.
She looked intensely at him. There were a few hairs on her chin which trembled as she breathed. “Up there, to Ghitta’s son’s place. Chiastra gave me a lift in a friend’s car. Do you think I was chosen as sole heir for no good reason?”
“I didn’t suppose so,” Soneri said.
“I cannot dispose of the legacy in any way I like. There are terms and conditions. Perhaps you know only one part of the will.”
“It’s not my business. I’m not a lawyer.”
“Ghitta made some additions to her will, and these have been lodged in the offices of her lawyer, Zurlini. They were added as a codicil to the will, and they mean that I’m no more than the executor. I will inherit, but I’ve got to oversee a grand work which will bear her name. All the detailed work will be carried out by the lawyer. I’m nothing more than the guarantor. I was the only person close to Ghitta in her last years. We lived like sisters.”
“What will this grand work be?”
“A hospice sited between Rigoso and Monchio, where there are only old people left.”
“Did she want to be reconciled with the people in the towns?”
Soneri saw the wrinkles distend, but rather than a smile, it was a smirk that appeared. “It might seem that way, but the truth is quite different. She wanted them to remember her, or rather she wanted them to be obliged to remember her. The hospice will be very large and will supply accommodation for a lot of old folk from the nearby villages, where Ghitta was known because she did the rounds as faith healer. It will be built in the upper part of Rigoso, from where it can be seen day and night by everyone, even by tourists coming off from the main road for the Lagastrello Pass. The sign on the façade will read CASA DI RIPOSO GHITTA TAGLIAVINA, the same as for war heroes or saints.”
“Do you think all this had anything to do with the murder?”
“Yes and no. Everything is connected, commissario. It’s true that Fornari was afraid she’d talk, but do you really think the spite that surrounded her counted for nothing? Do you think the judgment his father and the townspeople passed on Ghitta made no impact on the enfeebled mind of that boy? And then, from the time she got moving on the hospice project and started lobbying politicians for a contribution from public funds, everybody knew about it and that gave them an additional reason for resentment. That woman was the very Devil,” Fernanda said, in tones of admiration.
Without saying a word the commissario signalled his agreement, but Fernanda was no longer looking in his direction. She gave the impression of sifting through thoughts dug up from some time in the past.
“Maybe that’s the truth,” she started up again. “Maybe Devil is the right word. The hospice will seem to the world a work of charity, but the townspeople will see it as a monument to their defeat. They would rather have erased Ghitta from their memory, and instead they will now have no option but to read her name every day. Many of them will have to undergo the added humiliation of passing their last years in those rooms, and it is hard to imagine a more terrible affront to their pride. We’re talking about people of Ghitta’s age, the very ones who despised her most. And yet, for everyone else, for those of you who live in the city, Giuditta Tagliavini will be a great benefactor. In a few years when we’re all dead and gone, she’ll seem the same to people who live up there. History can be deceptive, wouldn’t you say?”
“I find it vacuous,” Soneri said, all the while feeling a hard lump inside him growing more and more solid. “It’s made up of illusions which soon fade. Would you believe me if I said I’ve reached the point where I don’t make much of a distinction between killers and victims?”
Fernanda bowed her head forward slightly and rested her elbows on the desk. Soneri waited for her to come back at him, to add something more to help clear up an affair which was not altogether rationally comprehensible, but perhaps she was of the same mind as him. Soneri understood she had chosen silence. All things considered, it seemed the best approach to him too.
“We are nothing, Fernanda,” he said with a sigh, “and nothing is what we leave behind. Ideas, politics, memories, love affairs – all vanished, mist, like the mist that has been hanging over us for months.”
It was indeed a misty Christmas, like a protracted November.
“Best wishes, commissario,” she said, and she went out.
“Merry Christmas, Fernanda.”
VALERIO VARESI is a journalist with La Repubblica. A Woman Much Missed is the fourth in a series of crime novels featuring Commissario Soneri, now the protagonist of one of Italy’s most popular television dramas. River of Shadows and The Dark Valley were both shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association International Dagger.
JOSEPH FARRELL is professor of Italian at the University of Strathclyde. He is the distinguished translator of novels by Leonardo Sciascia and Vincenzo Consolo, and plays by the Nobel Laureate Dario Fo. He is writing a book about R.L. Stevenson in Samoa, to be published by MacLehose Press in 2016.
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Valerio Varesi
RIVER OF SHADOWS
Translated from the Italian by Joseph Farrell
A relentless deluge lashes the Po Valley, and the river itself swells beyond its limits. A barge breaks free of its moorings and drifts erratically downstream; when it finally runs aground its seasoned pilot is nowhere to be found. The following day, an elderly man of the same surname falls from the window of a nearby hospital.
Commissario Soneri, scornful of his superiors’ scepticism, is convinced the two incidents are linked. Stonewalled by the bargemen who make their living along the riverbank, he scours the floodplain for clues. As the waters begin to ebb, the river yields up its secrets: tales of past brutality, bitter rivalry and revenge.
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Valerio Varesi
THE DARK VALLEY
Translated from the Italian by Joseph Farrell
Commissario Soneri returns to his roots for a hard-earned holiday, a few days mushrooming on the slopes of Montelupo
. The isolated village of his birth relies on a salame factory founded by Palmiro Rodolfi, and now run by his son, Paride.
On arrival, Soneri is greeted by anxious rumours about the factory’s solvency and the younger Rodolfi’s whereabouts. Soon afterwards, a body is found in the woods. In the shadow of Montelupo, the carabinieri prepare to apprehend their chief suspect – an ageing woodsman who defended the same mountains from the S.S. during the war.
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Valerio Varesi
GOLD, FRANKINCENSE AND DUST
Translated from the Italian by Joseph Farrell
Parma. A multi-vehicle pile-up on the autostrada. In the chaos, the burned body of a young woman is found at the side of the road. But she didn’t die in a car crash.
Commissario Soneri takes on the case, a welcome distraction from his troubled love life. The dead woman is identified as Nina Iliescu, a beautiful, enigmatic Romanian, whose life in Italy has left little trace, aside from a string of wealthy lovers from Italian high society.
Even Soneri is irresistibly drawn to Nina: a victim whose charms could not protect her from the perils of immigrant life. But her worshippers are an unappetising congregation – was Nina a sacrificial lamb, or a devilish temptress?
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Also by Valerio Varesi in English Translation
Dedication
Author’s Note
Map
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7