by Franco Marks
“You must always know the truth.”
Following orders was something Inspector Santoni’s temperament was suited to, but not so White Wolf’s pride. His resentment came into play. What would it achieve, knowing that he was the son of Don Sergio? He wouldn’t have wanted him as a father, that fat man with a long beard who smelled of food, dirt, perspiration, stale farts and bad digestion. He examined the only picture on the sideboard. Under the Christmas tree there was him with his father Alfredo and his mother Elisa. White Wolf would have been five years old, holding his first pair of skis. His father had cut a trunk of ash and, using his axe and plane, had worked it into a nice pair of skis, painted red. Marzio embraced them with pride and love – he looked as though he held in his hands his lifetime’s dream. Superimposing Don Sergio over his father was an offence to wisdom and to common sense. In this particular case, the rule of revealing all the details, of knowing everything, became a necessary omission.
He heard the garbage truck passing by outside. He knew that it was a gesture of catharsis, to erase any shadow or doubt about that odious thought. He picked up the envelope and made to throw it in the rubbish, but then a voice, an instinct, something that was the thread that kept him attached to the investigation, put the envelope ready to be posted back among the firewood, handy for possible burning.
19
The next morning it snowed red. An extraordinary event. A cloud of sand carried by the Sahara wind had become mixed with the snow and dusted the mountains like the bizarre work of an invisible hand. As usual, Doctor Lanzetti had left a handful of his paintings to dry in front of the clinic and the white of the painted snow had mixed with the red of the real stuff. With great care, he tried to erase the stains with a rag. He had spent a lifetime trying to render the white of the snow, and now this red sludge was turning his works of art bloody.
“If I painted vermillion snow, people would think I’d gone mad. Nobody would believe something like that was possible. It’s disgusting.”
Something strange and dark was happening in the town. It wasn’t just snow sickness any more – an omen of misfortune was spreading. All the signs pointed to the Apocalypse.
Don Sergio died, he too, suddenly – a blurry report from the hospital in Vicosauro, where he’d been hospitalised for a few days. For Marzio it represented an ending. There was no emotional involvement, even if he did still have the paraphernalia of the DNA, a thorn that continued to sting his conscience, at home. All he felt was anger at the disappearance of an important witness. Mysterious and ambiguous. The rational part of a plan – perhaps a criminal one – had been erased, but the unhealthy part, the part that it was hard to insert into a logical process, was still there: Agostino. The more Marzio examined his thoughts, spread out his deductions upon the table top of his mind, separated the ingredients, lucidly, naturally, the less he could understand how they had been amalgamated. He couldn’t find the cord that kept the bundle tied together. Had Don Sergio and Agostino been accomplices? Had the four girls been killed by a sexual maniac? In his own mind, Marzio had a parallel idea, a nagging thought that made him resonate like a bell. When he tried to quieten its noise, it rang more loudly. Behind the dynamics of the murder there was a sinister, perfect, diabolical mind. If he reviewed all the people who had been around Valdiluce in that period, only one possessed all the characteristics. A suspect so earth shattering, so close to him, that he’d never dared look into it – proceeding along that road meant burning on high tension wires. It was an illicit doubt that he never confided to anyone. Above all, not even to himself.
The whole town experienced the death of Don Sergio as a further threat. Valdiluce seemed to be falling helplessly, and even big boss Soprani roamed Marzio’s office more diligently and was constantly on the phone, giving orders, as though waiting for something to help him with the investigation. The television and newspapers had been very critical of the way it had been carried out. A few articles had accused Soprani of having business connections with some hotels under construction, and he’d had to defend himself. The administration had begun an investigation into some of his rather casual practices: the private use of the police helicopter, the companies in his wife’s name, the pressure he’d put on the mayor to obtain licences. It seemed that Soprani’s interest in Valdiluce was not simply that of a keen skier but that he was hiding something else. Marzio had neither imagined nor deduced that Soprani could be involved in anything shady. However, the right thing to do was to wait for the dust to settle and for the investigation to end with the verdict of a court, not with the summary sentence of the newspapers. Marzio had seen in the past how the media inflated some made-up story that then evaporated like soap bubbles. Soprani was aggressive, though, and very agitated. That same day, a well known journalist – Paolo Pinchieri – had written an editorial in the Corriere del Sole. The title: The Mysteries of Valbuia.
In Valdiluce – the ‘valley of light’ – the sun was always shining. As a child I learned to ski on its slopes and to love its mountains. I gave myself to them with the passion and the innocence of naivety. That landscape of woods, of clean air, of sport, calmed the soul. The chaos of the city disappeared among the streams of silver water, the red sunsets, the pristine snow. Vital energy.
Then suddenly, night made its appearance – or rather, an interminable eclipse of the sun. Four women died: ‘suicides’ according to police. Someone lifted the layer of moss and under the yellow buttercups were writhing tangles of worms. Behind the sunny appearance, dark plots. Who killed the four girls? Inspector Marzio Santoni, an expert skier and mountaineer, slips into a crevasse like an amateur. What happened to the twins who mysteriously disappeared and then were so thrillingly found again (apart from the absurd story that it was a boyish prank), why was a dog poisoned? A certain Morena tried to kill her husband with cyanide. And then… police bigwig Soprani seems to be the subject of a sensitive investigation.
A succession of questions without answers. How is it possible that these happy, beautiful girls committed suicide? Did everything happen the way the investigators say it did? Is the shocking video which astonished the world of Elisabetta, Flaminia, Angela and Stefania repeating that they want to ‘go out with a bang’ enough to reach a conclusion of collective suicide? The reconstruction inside the house, the fact that they were blind drunk, Elisabetta’s fingerprints in the kitchen. She was the one who accidentally left the gas knobs open while she was cleaning. Was her decision a conscious one? The investigation has been carried out scrupulously: DNA, autopsies, interrogations. All according to procedure – but with an eye to appearances. A single thought in the mind of all: to silence as soon as possible an event that was damaging the image of Valdiluce in the eyes of tourists. Why try and look beyond the obvious? The decision was unanimous, the verdict the only one possible. Collective suicide, death by asphyxiation.
The case is about to be closed. Easily, rapidly – but those of you who enter Valdiluce, remember that it is a dark, dangerous forest where the dirty laundry has been hurriedly hidden beneath the moss. Without anyone doing anything. A mystery that is intertwined with other mysteries. But from today, I, as a tourist, switch off the light – that once shining and happy town no longer belongs to me. I shall delete all my memories, and in the place of Valdiluce there is now a sinister place, a cursed castle full of blood and crimes has appeared on those icy peaks. The valley of darkness: Valbuia.
Soprani found Marzio intent on reading the Corriere del Sole. He snatched it out of his hands and crumpled it up into a ball. His expression was pompous.
“Bullshit. Here’s what we’ll answer to that journalist arsehole.” He held out a sheet of paper. “A fresh email, just printed. You’re the first to hear about it, dear Marzio. So you can free your head of all the doubts that have you in turmoil. This is an extraordinary document. We came into possession of it after expending a lot of time, manpower and money. We’ve got hold of the medical records discovered in a private clinic in Vissone. They�
�d been hidden for fear of a scandal. The husband had stayed quiet too. Angela, the history and literature teacher, had attempted to kill herself with gas twice. In her car in her garage and in the kitchen of a country house. She only survived by the skin of her teeth. The dynamic is clear: her psychological profile was compromised. Bipolar disorder, manic depressive psychosis. She’d been admitted to the clinic for depression multiple times, she treated herself with psychotropic drugs. She drank, perhaps she took drugs. And massive amounts of medicines were found in her body, your diabolical Ginpin and Psicontral – whose name alone is frightening enough. A poisoned life, kept hidden by relatives and friends. And that night she lost it. She decided for all of them. In fact, in the video she came up with the idea of doing something unforgettable. Something which would go down in history. That night her depression led her to attempt an insane act for the third time, involving the other three women in her madness. Unknowing victims, above all because they were drunk. She certainly turned on the gas, wearing gloves so that she’d leave no traces.”
“What about Elisabetta’s fingerprints? Why were they on the gas stopcock?”
“She was a cook, she fiddled about when she worked. But it doesn’t mean anything. In every movie, even the worst ones, the killer always puts on his gloves before he gets to work. Angela wore gloves to turn on the gas knobs. She was the killer. The cause of the dramatic accident. Perfect. The case is definitively closed. Press conference!”
20
More than a month had passed since the tragedy. Along the way, the first signs of spring had appeared and the snow was melting with a crackling that involved the sun, the water and the sky. The forest revealed the earth. Dazed by waves of scents, Marzio throttled the Vespa audaciously. Emerald moss, bark drying in the sun, bent grass attempting to react, to stand back up after being crushed under the white blanket for months, the penetrating fragrance of dormant mushrooms, the yellow leaves shelled like walnuts. Even the melted snow had a smell: a smell of icy wind, a slap of cold that framed all the other scents.
An unquiet spring. The campers of the forensic police had gone and the police circus had left the square deserted. Valdiluce lived its life with caution: the people had closed in on themselves, every step was counted, every word numbered – they lived in suspicion.
Marzio often took refuge in the woods. He was finding himself again. A large white bird sighed in the sky, the startled marmot ran, dragging its cumbersome backside, the squirrel played hide and seek. White Wolf intertwined his body with the trees, crossed the blackberry bushes, the fields of flowering strawberry, the earth where fungi emerged like curious heads. He climbed on the rocks. That world was his nature. He went back to being as wild as an animal. When he felt the call of nature, he would go to a magical meadow where leaves as huge as elephant’s ears grew, washing his nakedness in the wind. As a child among the trees, he had learned to gather his thoughts, his intimacy, to recognise the sounds that came from the road. The horn of the ice-cream van. The roar of an incredibly powerful, compact engine – that of a Ferrari leaving the factory near Valdiluce.
“It’s on the bend near the roadman’s house now.”
The tyres screeched and then the cylinders were unleashed at full power.
“He’s going down the straight bit by Dogana Nuova.”
Other sounds marked the rhythm of the hours. The horn of the coach that always carried the same people. The bells. The saw mill. The gunshots of the hunters. The barking of dogs. The sighs of some hidden couple making love among the leaves. No one in Valdiluce was happy to come across two lovers. Knowing a secret complicated your life. If you happened upon a couple in the throes of passion, you avoided being noticed, took a stealthy glance and then hurried away on tiptoe. But the step of mountain people is always long and fast, and sometimes someone accidentally rushed in upon two lovers, surprising them like two embarrassed snails. They’d resort to a bit of small talk to get themselves out of the tight spot.
“It’s cold today but the sirocco’ll be back tomorrow.”
“The firs aren’t doing very well this year – there must be some insect infesting them.”
That was how you found out that Alessandro the ski instructor was doing it with Giovanna, the mayor’s wife. And in those cases, the right to inform was incurred and the whole town would know.
But it was the silence that marked the rhythm. A calmness fed by the buzzing of the bees, the wind, the energy of the trees, the song of the birds. A strange happiness, a being at peace with nature – while after everything he’d been through, White Wolf felt out of sync with everything.
“The case is definitely closed.”
At the centre of the valley of his thoughts, a red neon sign flashed in Marzio’s mind. Continuous flashes that made him feel anger, impotence, damnation. He knew that without proof his doubts and certainties would never be listened to. He had to hold out. He had walked through every detail of the investigation thousands of times, and each time Agostino had emerged. He was the only real unknown quantity. He was evasive during interrogations. He confused you with sudden changes of direction, some of which were nonsense while others took a seemingly logical direction but proved to be pure paranoia when they were checked out. Was he cunning enough to pretend he was crazy, or was he just crazy? Harmless or perverse? Criminal literature was full of characters like him. Agostino Uberti had been the last person to see the four girls alive and had given the alarm, and even if he denied having entered apartment twelve, with his pass key he would have had every opportunity to. From the swirl of faces of the people who had been questioned, the ball on the roulette table always gravitated towards him. Him, in close up, with the scar slicing across his head. His sister’s – and before his death, Don Sergio’s – continuous and obsessive attempts to protect him were suspicious. Only that thread which led to his house remained, and Marzio wanted to remain attached to it. By finding new ways to investigate, by trying to befriend him. If he could gain his confidence, he would perhaps reveal his personality.
Marzio had scoured the ground that surrounded Agostino’s house several times with obsessive care, and spied upon his movements even before Don Sergio had died. At one o’clock every afternoon, the priest arrived and all three locked themselves up in the house to eat and talk about who-knew-what – presumably something mysterious or trivial. It was difficult to distinguish an everyday evil from repetitive behaviour regulated by habit. Malice or madness. A strategy planned with extraordinary mathematical precision or the result of animal instinct. The question tormented Marzio, sometimes preventing him from sleeping. He tried to divert his thoughts to other things, to philosophy, to cataloguing professional defects – the professional defects of an investigator. He analysed reality, archiving everything away by model, by similitude. Lately he had been keen to decipher the way people walked. An individual’s walk revealed their personality, each with its own characteristics. Big boss Soprani’s walk was jerky, as though he didn’t bend his knees, and his head swung like a pendulum, trying to confer equilibrium on his lean, stiff body: a man ready to do anything to succeed. Carlina, Agostino’s sister, took heavy steps, plunged her feet down onto the ground like caterpillar tracks: coarse boots but refined brains. Agostino proceeded as though he were doing a slalom, without ever going in a straight line. He looked like a thrush in the hunter’s line of fire: a frightened man who ran away but always managed to escape the shot.
As a bio-detective, Marzio needed to have a light step, like a ballet dancer suspended in the heavens so as not to weigh upon the earth – upon the little creatures, the pebbles, the myrtle bushes. It never occurred to anyone that beneath a shoe there existed a silent world which endured death and violence.
Elisabetta fell sensually upon him before he fell asleep. It was a long time since it had last happened. He’d told himself to remain on the path of logic, no weakness, no deviation. He’d loosened the reins for a moment: there were weights pressing down on his body, crushing him. He let
his skin get some air. Marzio was excited, his penis throbbing. Since the day of the crime, he had suppressed all desire. He touched himself, thinking of her. An image that was increasingly ethereal, as though it were blurred by time. At the end of the moment of passion he found himself stupid and wet, without Elisabetta’s beauty and warmth beside him. Alone. A damaged man. Feeling something calling to him from outside, he got out of bed. He opened the window. The moon was bright. Old friend, they’d spent so many nights together. It was as if it were beckoning him. He had to find the light in the sky, tune in to it. As a lad, when there was a full moon, Marzio would walk for hours guided by that satellite, his route decided by the sky, across small streams of silver and on those hills where your footprints became the footprints of astronauts. The light flattened out the relief of the mountains and stretched the folds into caves where shadows nestled, and the whole world was clear, without subterfuge or deception. The snowcat would often swoop down, its headlights on. Eraldo, its driver and a friend of Marzio, approaching and playfully trying to scare him, to flush the world out of its stillness. Then then he would shut off the engine and White Wolf and Eraldo would sit on the roof of the cabin and in silence look at Valdiluce illuminated by the moon under the stars. Eraldo, with his cigarette lit, his eyes half closed and his chin that looked as though it had been hewn by an axe, would grow tender.
“How does this town manage to look so beautiful?”
Marzio pulled himself free of the sticky honey of memory. He bent down in front of the window, tired, almost aged. How had Valdiluce become so horrible? Inhospitable, without tourists, this continuous overlapping of grim events. Paolo Pinchieri, the journalist who wrote in the Corriere del Sole, was right:
